'a <\- 



s- 't. 









% ^^- 

■x^^' 



'-^'i^ 

xV </», 



,0- ^o 



'^^<^ 



.^ %, 



o_^^;;V^^"'^\/' 



.^- ^> 



.S- -<: 



>^ '^^ 



,-y' 



^,. s* 






.x^-^ ->• 






^,. * 9 1 -*" v'^ 



.'?■' 



\v ,s-. 



\' . 



'^^.^^' 

--.^^•\ 






-^.^ 












.-J^^ 












<^^ 









O 






o. 






A 






'^. 



x^^- 












^^ ''t. 










%.' 



'^^• 



o i -A > 



.^^' 



.^^ 



1^ .* 












%\ %<^- 



'"-.. 



^^■ 






A'' 
,0 o 






^> 



\^ 



>^% ■ 









' » « s- 



x^^ '''^^ 



.-v 



'^ 
^-^..,^^ 



v^^: 






.^^• 






In 




Memoriam 



by/ 
ALFRED T^ENNYSON 




WITH A PREFACE BV 

HENRY ..VAN DYKE 



¥' 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

HARRY, FENN 




AlfV:l 



FORDS, HO[VARD, &■ HULBERT 
NEW YORK MDCCCXCyil 

L. 



%SS OF C(fe 

NOVieiauY \\ 

v^ ^ of Coy 



TIT 56 4^ 



Copyright, 1897, by 
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT 




losophy, and in argumentative discussion. He 
did not incline strongly to the study of the 
classics; and towards mathematics, the favour- 
ite discipline of Cambridge, he was almost en- 
tirely indifferent. These mental indispositions, 
together with a lack of power or willingness to 
retain in his memory the mass of uninteresting 
facts and dates which are required for success 
in examinations, and a delicacy of health which 
at times made him subject to serious depression 
of spirits, unfitted him to contend for university 
honours. But he was a natural leader among 
the high-spirited youth who found in the reality 
of college life and the freedom of intellectual 
intercourse a deeper and broader education 
than the routine of the class-room could give. 
There was a debating society in Cambridge 
at this time, familiarly called " The Twelve 
Apostles," which included such men of proin- 
ise as Richard Monckton Milnes (afterwards 
Lord Houghton), W. H. Thompson (after- 
wards Master of Trinity), Richard Chevenix 
Trench (afterwards Archbishop of Dublin), 
Henry Alford (afterwards Dean of Canterbury), 
Frederic Dennison Maurice, W. H. Brookfield, 
James Spedding, Edmund Lushington, and G. 
S. Venables. In this society of kindling genius 
Hallam shone with a singular lustre, not only 
by reason of the depth and clearness of his 
vii 



thought and the masterful vigour of his ex- 
pression, but also because of the sweetness and 
purity of his character and the sincerity of his 
religious spirit, strengthened and ennobled by 
conflict with honest doubt.* One of his friends 
wrote of him : " I have met with no man his 
superior in metaphysical subtlety ; no man his 
equal as a philosophical critic on works of 
taste ; no man whose views on all subjects 
connected with the duties and dignities of 
humanity were more large, more generous, 
and enlightened." Mr. Gladstone, recalling 
his intimacy with Hallam at Eton, bears wit- 
ness to "his unparalleled endowments, and his 
deep enthusiastic affections, both religious and 
human." 

It was by such qualities that Alfred Tenny- 
son was drawn to Arthur Hallam; and al- 
though, or perhaps because, they were unlike 
in many things,'' their minds and hearts were 
wedded in a friendship which was closer than 
brotherhood, and in which Tennyson felt that 
Hallam's influence was the stronger and more 
masculine element, so that he always spoke of 
himself as "widowed" by his loss.' 

' In Memorianty cantos xxiii ; xli ; Ixxxv, 12 ; Ixxxvii, 8 ; 
Ixxxix • xcv, 8 ; xcvi ; cix : ex ; cxi ; cxii ; cxiii ; cxiv, 7. 
' Canto Ixxix, 5. 

' Cantos ix, xvii, xl, xlii, Ixxxv, xcvii. 
viii 



1832, the year of his graduation at Cam- 
bridge, he was engaged to Miss Emily Ten- 
nyson, the poet's sister.' His home was with 
his father in Wimpole Street, called the longest 
street in London ;^ and on leaving college he 
began the study of law,' looking forward to 
the higher life of public service, in which so 
many of England's best young men find their 
mission. "* In August, 1833, he went with his 
father to Germany. On the way from Pesth to 
Vienna he was exposed to inclement weather, 
and contracted an intermittent fever. The 
symptoms were slight and seemed to be abat- 
ing ; but the natural frailty of his constitution 
involved unforeseen danger. There was a 
weakness of the heart, which the strength of 
the spirit concealed. On the 15th of Septem- 
ber, while he seemed to be reposing quietly, 
the silver cord was loosed and the golden bowl 
was broken. 

" In Vienna's fatal walls 
God's finger touch'd him, and he slept." ^ 

The sharp and overwhelming shock of losing 
such a friend, suddenly, irretrievably, in ab- 

' In Memoriaiii, canto Ixxxiv ; Epithalaraium, stanza 2. 

^ Canto vii. 

^ Canto ix, line 12. 

* Canto cxiii. 

^ Cantos Ixxxv, 5 ; xcviii, 2. 



sence, with no opportunity of speaking a word 
of love and farewell, brought Tennyson face 
to face with the intense and inexorable reality 
of Death — the great mystery which must 
either darken all life and quench the springs 
of poesy, or open a new world of victory to 
the spirit and refresh it with deeper and never 
failing fountains of inspiration. 

hi Metiioriani begins with the confession of 
this dreadful sense of loss, and the firm resolve 
to hold fast the memory of his grief, even though 
he doubts whether he can 

" reach a hand thro' time to catch 
The far-off interest of tears." 

Tiie arrangement of the poem does not follow 
strictly the order of logic or the order of time. 
It was not written consecutively, but at inter- 
vals, and the period of its composition extends 
over at least sixteen years. The Epithalamium 
with which it closes was made in 1842, the 
date of the marriage of Miss Emily Tennyson 
to Edmund Law Lushington, the friend ad- 
dressed in canto LXXXV. The Proem, "Strong 
Son of God, Immortal Love," was added in 
1849, to sum up and express the final signifi- 
cance of the whole lyrical epic of the inner 
life which had grown so wonderfully through 
these long years of spiritual experience, 
xii 




" The general way of its being written," said 
Tennyson, " was so queer that if there were a 
blank space I would put in a poem." And yet 
there is a profound coherence in the series of 
separate lyrics ; and a clear advance towards 
a definite goal of thought and feeling can be 
traced through the freedom of structure which 
characterizes the poem. 

The first division of the poem, from the first 
to the eighth canto (I follow here the grouping 
of the sections which was made by Tennyson 
himself), moves with the natural uncertainty 
of a lonely and sorrowful heart ; questioning 
whether it is possible or wise to hold fast to 
sorrow, questioning whether it be not half a 
sin to try to put such a grief into words, ques- 
tioning whether the writing of a memorial 
poem can be anything more than a 

" sad mechanic exercise, 
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain." 

But the conclusion is, that since the lost friend 
loved the poet's verse, the poem shall be writ- 
ten for his sake and consecrated to his mem- 
ory, like a flower planted on a tomb, to live or 
die. 

The second division, beginning with the 
ninth canto and closing with the nineteenth, 
describes in lyrics of wondrous beauty the 
xiii 



home-bringing of Artliur's body in a ship from 
Italy, and the burial in Clevedon Church, which 
stands on a solitary hill, overlooking the Bris- 
tol Channel. This took place on January the 
third, 1834. A calmer, stronger, steadier spirit 
now enters into the poem, and from this point 
it moves forward with ever deepening power 
and beauty, to pay its rich tribute to the im- 
mortal meaning of friendship and to pour its 
triumphant light through the shadows of the 
grave. 

The third division, beginning with the twen- 
tieth canto, returns again to the subject of 
personal bereavement and the possibility of ex- 
pressing it in poetry. It speaks of tlie neces- 
sity in the jioet's heart for finding such an 
expression, which is as natural as song is to 
the bird. He turns back to trace the path- 
way of friendship, and remembers how love 
made it fair and sweet, doubling all joy, and 
dividing all pain. That companionship is now 
broken and the way is dreary. The love to 
which he longs to prove himself still loyal is 
now the minister of lonely sorrow. And yet 
the very capacity for such suffering is better 
than the selfish placidity of the loveless life : 

" 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all.* 



The fourth division opens, in the twenty- 
eighth canto, with a Christmas poem. The 
poet wonders how it is possible to l<eep the 
joyous household festival under the shadow of 
this great loss. But through the saddened and 
half-hearted merry-making there steals, at last, 
in the silence, the sense that those who have 
left the happy circle still live and are un- 
changed in sympathy and love. From the 
darkness of Christmas-eve rises the prayer for 
the dawning of Christmas-day and 

" The light that shone when Hope was born." 

Led by this thought, the poet turns to the 
story of Lazarus, and to Mary's faith in Him 
who was the Resurrection and the Life. Such 
a faith is so pure and sacred that it demands 
the reverence even of those who do not share 
it. For what would our existence be worth 
without immortality? Effort and patience 
would be vain. It would be better to drop 
at once into darkness. Love itself would be 
changed and degratled if we believed that death 
was the end of everything. These immortal 
instincts of our manhood came to their perfect 
expression in the life and teachings of Christ. 
And though the poet's utterance of these 
divine things be but earthly and imperfect, at 
least it is a true tribute to the friend who had 

XV 



spoken of them so often. Thus he stands 
again beside the funereal yew-tree, of which he 
wrote, in the second canto, that it never blos- 
somed, and sees that, after all, it has a season 
of bloom, in which the dust of tiny flowers 
rises from it in living smoke. Even so his 
thoughts of death are now blossoming in 
thoughts of a higher life into which his friend 
has entered, thoughts of larger powers and 
nobler duties in the heavenly existence. But 
may not this mysterious and sudden advance- 
ment divide their friendship ? No, for if the 
lost friend is moving onward so swiftly now, 
he will be all the better fitted to be a teacher 
and helper when their intercourse is renewed ; 
but if death should prove to be an intervital 
trance, then when he awakens, the old love 
will awaken with him. From this assurance 
the poet passes to wondering thoughts of the 
manner of life of " the happy dead," and rises 
to the conviction that it must include an un- 
changed personal identity and a certain per- 
sonal recognition and fellowship. This is not 
uttered by way of argument, but only with the 
brevity and simplicity of songs, which move 
like swallows over the depth of grief, 

" Whose muffled motions blindly drown 
The bases of my life in tears." 
xvi 



The fifth division of the poem, in the fiftieth 
canto, begins with a prayer that his unseen 
friend may be near him in the hours of gloom 
and pain and doubt and death. Such a pres- 
ence would bring with it a serene sympathy 
and allowance for mortal ignorance and weak- 
ness and imperfection. For doubtless this 
lower life of ours is a process of discipline and 
education for something better. Good must be 
the final goal of ill. We feel this but dimly 
and blindly ; our expression of it is like the 
cry of a child in the night. But at least the 
desire that it may be true, comes from that 
which is most God-like in our souls. Can it be 
that God and Nature are at strife ? Is it pos- 
sible that all the hopes and prayers and aspira- 
tions of humanity are vain dreams, and that 
the last and highest work of creation must 
crumble utterly into dust ? This would be the 
very mockery of reason. And yet the sure an- 
swer is not found. It lies behind the veil. So 
the poet turns away, thinking to close his song 
with a last word of farewell to the dead ; but 
the Muse calls him to abide a little longer with 
his sorrow in order that he may "take a no- 
bler leave." 

This is the theme with which the sixth divi- 
sion opens, in the fifty-ninth canto. The poet 
is to live with sorrow as a wife, and to learn 
xvii 



from her all that she has to teach. He turns 
again to the thought of the strange difference 
in wisdom and purity between the blessed dead 
and the living, and finds new comfort and se- 
curity in the thought that this difference cannot 
destroy love. He thinks of the tablet to Hal- 
lam's memory in Clevedon Church, silvered by 
the moonlight, or glimmering in the dawn. He 
dreams of Hallam, over and over again. Night 
after night they seem to walk and talk together 
as they did on tlieir tour in the Pyrenees. 

The seventy-second canto opens the seventh 
division of the poem with the anniversary of 
Hallam's death ; an autumnal dirge, wild and 
dark ; followed by sad lyrics which ring the 
changes on the perishableness of all earthly 
fame and beauty. But now the Christmas-tide 
returns, and brings the tender household joys. 
This is a brighter Christmas than the last. 
The thought of how faithfully and nobly Arthur 
would have borne the sorrow if he had been 
the one to be left while his friend was taken, 
calms and strengthens the poet's heart. He 
reconciles himself more deeply with death ; 
learns to believe that it has ripened friendship 
even more than earthly intercourse could have 
done ; assures himself that the transplanted 
life is still blooming and bearing richer fruit, 
and at last complains only because deatii has 
xviii 



" put our lives so far apart 
We cannot hear each other speak." 

Now tlie spring comes, renewing the face of 
the earth, and with it comes a new tenderness 
and sweetness into the poet's song. There is 
a pathetic vision of all the domestic joys that 
might have been centred about Arthur's life if 
it had been spared, and of the calm harmony 
of death if the two friends could have arrived 
together at the blessed goal — 

" And He that died in Holy Land 

Would reach us out the shining hand, 
And take us as a single soul." 

This vision almost disturbs the new peace 
that has begun in the poet's heart ; but he 
comes back again, in the eighty-fifth canto 
(the longest in the poem, and its turning-point), 
to the deep and unalterable feeling that love 
with loss is better than life without love. An- 
other friend, the same who was afterwards to 
be married to Tennyson's sister, has asked him 
whether his sorrow has darkened his faith and 
made him incapable of friendship. The answer 
comes from the inmost depths of the soul, 
recalling all the noble and spiritual influences 
of the interrupted comradeship ; confessing 
that it still abides and works as a potent, 
strengthening force in his" life ; and seeking, 



XIX 



for tha coming years, a new friendship, not to 
rival the old, nor ever to supplant it, but to 
teach his heart still 

" to beat in time with one 
That warms another living breast." 

Now the glory of the summer-earth kindles 
the poetic fancy once more to rapture. Now 
the old college haunts are revisited and the joys 
of youth live again in memory. The thought 
of Arthur's spiritual presence lends a new and 
loftier significance to these common delights, 
brings more sweetness than sadness, makes 
his letters, read in the calm summer midnight, 
seem like a living voice. The remembrance 
of his brave conflict with his doubts, gives 
encouragement to faith. Now he is delivered 
from the struggle ; he has attained unto knowl- 
edge and wisdom : but the poet, still lingering 
among the shadows and often confused by 
them, holds fast to the spiritual companion- 
ship — 

" I cannot understand : I love." 

The eighth division, from the ninety-ninth to 
the one hundred and third canto, opens with 
another anniversary of Hallam's death, which 
brings the consoling thought that since grief is 
common, sympathy must be world-wide. The 
old home at Somefsby is now to be forsaken, 

XX 



and the poet takes farewell of the familiar 
scenes in lyrics of exquisite beauty. The divi- 
sion ends with a mystical dream, in which he 
is summoned to a voyage upon the sea of 
eternity, and the human powers and talents, 
in the guise of maidens who have served him 
in this life, accompany him still, and the man 
he loved appears on the ship as his comrade. 
- The ninth and last division begins, in the 
one hundred and fourth canto, with the return 
of another Christmas-eve. The Tennyson 
family had removed in 1837 to Beech Hill 
House, and now, as the time draws near the 
birth of Christ, they hear not the fourfold peal 
of bells from the four hamlets lying around 
the rectory at Somersby, but a single peal from 
the tower of Waltham Abbey, dimly seen 
through the mist, below the distant hill. It is 
a strange, solemn, silent holiday season. But 
with the ringing of the bells, on the last night 
of the old year, there comes into it a new, stir, 
ring melody of faith, of hope, of high desire 
and victorious trust. This is a stronger, loftier 
song than the poet could have reached before 
grief ennobled him. And from this he moves 
onward into that splendid series of lyrics 
with which the poem closes. The harmony of 
knowledge with reverence ; the power of the 
heart of man to assert its rights against the 



XXI 



colder conclusions of mere intellectual logic ; 
the certainty that man was born to enjoy a 
higher life than the physical, and that tiiough 
his body may have been developed from the 
lower animals, his soul may work itself out 
from the dominion of the passions, to an imper- 
ishable liberty; the supremacy of love; the sure 
progress of all things towards a hidden goal of 
glory; tlie indomitable courage of the human 
will, with its God-born power to purify our 

deeds 

" and trust, 
With faith that comes of self-control. 
The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved, 
And all we flow from, soul in soul," — 

these are the mighty and exultant chords with 
which the poet ends his music. 

/;/ Meinoriaui is a dead march. But it is 
a march into immortality. 

The promise of Arthur Hallam's life was 
not broken. Three-score years and ten of 
earthly labour could hardly have accomplished 
anything greater than the work which was in- 
spired by his early death and consecrated to 
his sacred memory. The heart of man which 
can win. such victory out of its darkest defeat, 
and reap such harvest from the furrows of the 
grave, is neither sprung from dust nor destined 
xxii 



to return to it. A poem like In Memo7'iam, 
more than all flowers of the returning- spring, 
more than all shining wings that flutter above 
the ruins of the chrysalis, more than all sculp- 
tured tombs and monuments of the beloved 
dead, is the living evidence and intimation of 
an endless life. 

Henry van Dyke. 

New York City, 
Alay 23, 1S97, 




Daffodil {Narcissus) : the Asphodel of earlier English 

and French poets Title-page 

PAGE 

Asphodel : Greek flower of immortality . 
Violet wreath. — Editor's Note on Illustrations 
INMEMORIAM: Half-title. Lyre and palms . 
Introduction. — Passion-flowers : lily blossom and roots 

CANTO 

I. — " One clear harp' 

II.— "The clock 

Beats out the little lives of men " . 
" Old yew, which graspest at the stones " 
III. — " From out waste places comes a cry, 
And murmurs from the dying sun " 

Flag-blossom 

IV. — " To sleep I give my powers away." — Poppy 

blossoms 

V. — " Like dull narcotics numbing pain." — Poppy 

buds ......... 14 

VI. — Hour-glass and skeleton hand .... 

" She takes a riband or a rose " . . . .16 



X.Wll 



CANTO PAGE 

VII. — " The long unlovely street " .... 18 
" And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain 

On the bald street breaks the blank day " . 18 

VIII. — " A flower beat with rain and wind " . . ig 
IX. — " Fair ship, that from the Italian shore 

Sailest the placid ocean-plains " . ... 21 

Sea-weed .22 

X. — " I hear the bell struck in the night " . . 23 

" Should toss with tangle and with shells " . 24 
XI. — Furze, gossamer, "yon great plain," "the 

bounding main" (Bristol Channel) . . 25 

" Calm on the seas, and silver sleep ". . . 26 

XII. — Carrier-dove ........ 27 

Dover Cliffs 28 

XIII.— Willow 29 

Chinese lacquer (1) ...... 30 

XIV. — Ship's mast and rigging 31 

Ship at quay . 32 

XV. — " To-night the winds begin to rise. 

The rooks are blown about the skies " . .33 

" The last red leaf is whirl'd away " . . 34 
XVI. — " The unhappy bark 

That strikes by night a craggy shelf" . . 35 

Kelp 36 

XVII. — " And like a beacon guards thee home " . . 37 

Sea-weed 38 

XVIII. — " The violet of his native land " ... 39 

Violets ........ 40 

XIX. — Junction of rivers Wye and Severn ; Bristol 
Channel in the distance ; Clevedon Church 

on the hill 41 

Sea-weed . 42 

XX. — " The vacant chair " ...... 43 

Poppy 44 

XXI. — " I take the grasses of the grave. 

And make them pipes whereon to blow " . . 45 

"And pipe but as the linnets sing" ... 46 

XXII. — " The path by which we twain did go " . .47 

Apple-blossoms ....... 47 

Poppy 48 

XXIII. — Lily-pads; Pandean pipes 49 

"And round us all the thicket rang 

To many a flute of Arcady " .... 50 

xxviii 



CANTO PAGE 

XXIV.— Sun-spots 51 

XXV. — Carrier-birds 52 

XXVI. — " Ere yet tlie morn 

Breaks hither over Indian seas " . . . 53 

Chinese lacquer (II) 54 

XXVII.— Pansies 55 

XXVIII.— "The Christmas bells from hill to hill 

Answer each other in the mist " . . .56 
XXIX. — "Holly boughs entwine the cold baptismal 

font" 58 

XXX.-— " The holly round the Christmas hearth " . 59 
XXXI.— Jerusalem wall, and "the purple brows of 

Olivet" 61 

Flower-spray 62 

XXXII.— Syrian spikenard jar 63 

XXXIII. — " Whose faith has centre everywhere " . 64 
XXXIV. — " This round of green, this orb of flame " . 65 
" Like birds the charming serpent draws" . 65 
XXXV. — Asphodel: legendary Greek flower of im- 
mortality ....... 66 

XXXVI. — " Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape 

Had bruised the herb and crush'd the 

grape" 67 

" He that binds the sheaf " . . . .68 

XXXVII. — " And hear thy laurel whisper sweet " . 69 

" And dear to me as sacred wine " . .70 

XXXVIII. — " The herald melodies of spring" . . 71 

XXXIX. — " Dark yew, that graspest at the stones " . 72 

XL. — " When first she wears her orange-flower " . 73 

XLL— Iris 75 

" Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor " . 76 

XLII. — Carnation ....... 77 

Dogwood ....... 77 

XLIIL— Sleep, Death, Resurrection , . . . 78 

XLIV. — Poppy flower and bud 79 

XLV. — Honeysuckle So 

XLVL— " The path we came by, thorn and flower " 81 

XLVII.— Cyclamen 82 

XLVIIL— Harp of the singer 83 

"These brief lays" — "short swallow- 
flights" 83 

XLIX. — " Like light in many a shivered lance 

That breaks about the dappled pools." . 84 

xxix 



CANTO 

L. — " And on the low dark verge of life 
The twilight of eternal day " . 
LI.— Light in darkness ..... 
LI I. — Bethlehem (Arabic) to Calvary (thorns) . 
LIIL — " Had the wild oat not been sown " 

"The grain by which a man may live " . . go 

LIV. — "That not a moth with vain desire 

Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire" . . . gi 

LV. — " And finding that of fifty seeds 

She often brings but one to bear " . . .92 

LVI. — Spire from cathedral at Chartres. — "Fanes 

of fruitless prayer" 94 

LVII.—" One set slow bell will seem to toll " . . 96 
LVI 1 1. — " As drop by drop the water falls 

In vaults and catacombs, they fell " . . 97 

Poppy 97 

LIX. — Time and Grief ...... 

LX. — " The little village looks forlorn " . 
LXI. — " The perfect flower " .... 

" How dwarf'd a growth of cold and night ' 

LXI I.— Poppies 

LXIII. — " Love in which my hound has part " 

LXIV. — " A secret sweetness in the stream " . . 103 

"Or in the furrow musing stands" . . . 104 

LXV. — Clover-blossom . 105 

" Self-balanced on a lightsome wing " . . 105 
LXVI. — "Which makes a desert in the mind " . . 106 

Flag-blossom 107 

LXVI I. — St. Andrew's Church, Clevedon. 

" I know that in thy place of rest 

By that broad water of the west. 
There comes a glory on the walls" . . . 108 

" And in the dark church like a ghost 

Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn" . . . 109 

LXVI II.— Clover-leaf no 

LXIX. — " I took the thorns to bind my brows" . . in 

" That seem'd to touch it into leaf " . . 112 

LXX. — "Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wiought " 113 

LXXI. — " In which we went thro' summer France" . 114 

LXXII. — " With blasts that blow the poplar white " . 115 

Poppy . . . . . . . .116. 

LXXI 1 1. — Apple-blossoms 117 

XXX 



CANTO PAGE 

LXXIV.— Laurel ii8 

LXXV. — Greek harp iig 

Laurel — glory-crown .... 120 

LXXVL — " Kre half the lifetime of an oak " . . 121 

LXXVIL— Lyre 122 

LXXVIII. — " The silent snow possess'd the earth " . 125 

LXXIX. — " For us the same cold streamlet curl'd " 125 

LXXX. — Monument : initial 127 

LXXXL — " For love is now mature in ear " . . 128 

" And gave all ripeness to the grain " . 128 

LXXXIL — " Or ruin'd chrysalis of one " . . . i2g 

LXXXIII. — " Bring orchis, bring the fox-glove spire " 130 

LXXXIV. — " Made cypress of her orange flower " . 131 

Hickory-bud 133 

LXXXV.— A bit of old Vienna. 

" In Vienna's fatal walls " . . . 134 

" And Autumn, with a noise of rooks " . 137 

" The primrose of the later year " . . 140 

I LXXXVL — " Sweet after showers, ambrosial air" . 141 

LXXXVIL— College buildings: Cambridge. 

" I past beside the reverend walls 

In which of old I wore the gown " . . 142 

" The bar of Michael Angelo" . . . 144 

LXXXVIIL— Bird of Paradise 145 

LXXXIX. — Sycamore foliage ..... 146 

" And brushing ankle-deep in flowers " . 148 
XC. — Pine-cones . . . . . . .149 

XCL — " Upon the thousand waves of wheat 

That ripple round the lonely grange" . 151 

XCIL — Sweet-brier 152 

XCin. — Grasses 153 

XCIV. — " The conscience as a sea at rest" . . 154 

XCV. — "And bats went round in fragrant skies" 155 

"The filmy shapes that haunt the dusk" 155 

"The heavy-folded rose" . . . 158 

XCVL — Antique tortoise-shell lyre with ox-horns 159 

Mount Sinai 160 

XCVIL — " On misty mountain-ground" . . 161 

White clematis 163 

XCVIIL — " By summer belts of wheat and vine " . 164 

XCIX. — " Von swollen brook that bubbles fast " . 166 
xxxi 



CANTO PAGE 

C. — " Gray old grange or lonely fold " . . i68 

CI. ^" Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair " . 170 

CII.— Hollyhock 172 

cm.— Iris 174 

CIV. — Bethlehem pearl rosary 177 

CV.- Laurel 178 

Chinese lacquer (III) 179 

CVI. — " Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky " . 180 
CVII. — "Ice . . . bristles all the brakes and 

thorns " 182 

" l!ut fetch the wine, 

Arrange the board and brim the glass " . . 183 

CVIII.— Pomegranate 184 

CIX.— "The blind hysterics of the Celt."— Sham- 
rock 185 

Floral decoration 186 

ex. — "The proud was half disarm'd of pride, 
Nor cared the serpent at thy side 

To flicker with his double tongue " . . 187 

White berry 188 

CXI. — " I!y blood a king, at lieart a clown '' . . i8g 

CXH. — " And world-wide fluctuation sway'd 

In vassal tides that foUow'd thought" . . 191 

CXIII. — " A pillar steadfast in the storm " . . . 192 

Sea-weed ........ 193 

CXIV. — Emblems of Time ...... 194 

Honeysuckle 195 

CXV. — " By ashen roots the violets blow " . . 196 

"The happy birds, that change their sky " . 197 

CXVI. — Dogwood: initial 198 

Dogwood : tail-piece 198 

CXVII. — " For every grain of sand that runs " . . 199 

" And every span of shade that steals " . igg 

CXVIII. — " Iron dug from central gloom, 

And heated hot with burning fears " . . 200 

CXIX. — " Doors, where my heart was used to beat " . 202 

" I smell the meadow in the street" . . 202 

CXX. — " Like Paul with beasts, I fought with 

Death " 203 

CXXl. — " Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun " . . 204 

" Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night" . 205 



CANTO PAGE 

CXXI I. — " A sphere of stars about my soul " . . 206 

" And every thought breaks out a rose " . 207 

CXXIII. — " They melt like mist, the solid lands " . 208 
CXXIV. — " The petty cobwebs we have spun, 



And heard an ever-breaking shore 
That tumbled in the Godless deep " . . 209 
CXXV. — " My harp." — Antique Greek coin . . 211 
CXXVI. — " And hear at times a sentinel" . . . 212 
CXXVII.— " Well roars the storm to those that hear 

A deeper voice across the storm " . .213 

CXXVIII. — " Vast eddies in the flood of onward time " 215 
" To make old bareness picturesque 
And tuft with grass a feudal tower " . . 216 

CXXIX. — Lily stalk and blossom 217 

CXXX. — " Thou standest in the rising sun " . . 218 
CXXXI. — " Rise in the spiritual rock, 

Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure " 219 
Epithalamium : " The Wedding March "... 221 
" Pelt us in the porch with flowers " . . 224 
" Dumb is that tower which spake so loud " 226 
" And rise, O moon, from yonder down. 
Till over down and over dale 
All night the shining vapour sail 
And pass the silent-lighted town " . . 227 
" And one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves" . 229 



A. H. H. 



OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII. 



^^\id^ %^ ^^ "^^/^fl^ ^t^ 




■■sr 



-^^'1^ . ^'^ki-^' ' « 



/2^; 



j-^iii^^' 



TRONG Son of Ciod, immortal 
Love, 
Whom we, that have not 
seen thy face, 
th, and faith alone, embrace, 
where we cannot jjrove ; 



Thine are these orbs of light and shade; 

Thou madest Life in man and brute ; 

Thou madest Death ; and lo, thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made ! 



Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 

Thou madest man, lie knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die; 

Antl thou hast made him : thou art just. 
3 




Thou seemest human and divine, 

The highest, holiest manhood, thou: 
Our wills are ours, we know not how; 

Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 

Our little systems have their day; 

They have their day and cease to be : 
They are but broken lights of thee. 

And thou, O T,ord, art more than they. 

We have but faith : we cannot know ; 

For knowledge is of things we see ; 

And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness : let it grow. 



Let knowledge grow from more to more. 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mintl and soul, according well, 

May make one music as before. 

But vaster. We are fools and slight; 
We mock thee when we do not fear : 
But help thy foolish ones to bear; 

Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. 
4 



Forgive what seem'd my sin in me, 

What seem'd my worth since I began ; 
For merit lives from man to man, 

And not from man, O Lord, to thee. 

Forgive my grief for one removed, 

Thy creature, whom I found so fair. 
I trust he lives in thee, and there 

I find him worthier to be loved. 

Forgive these wild and wandering cries, 
Confusions of a wasted youth ; 
Forgive them where they fail in truth, 

And in thy wisdom make me wise. - 

1849. 




I. 



HELD it truth, with him who sings 
To one clear harp in divers 

tones, 
That men may rise on stepping- 
stones 
Of their dead selves to higher 
thiniiS. 



But who shall so forecast the years 
And find in loss a gain to match? 
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch 

The far-off interest of tears? 

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd. 
Let darkness keep her raven gloss : 
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss. 

To dance with Death, to beat the ground. 



Than that the victor Hours should scorn 
The long result of love, and boast, 
" Behold the man that loved and lost. 

But all he was is overworn." 



11. 




which graspest at the stones 
'hat name the underlying dead, 
Thy fibres net the dreamless 
head, 

Thy roots are wrapt about the 
bones. 



The seasons bring the flower again, 
And bring the firstling to the flock; 
And in the dusk of thee the clock 

Beats out the little lives of men. 



O not for thee the glow, the l>loom, 
Who changest not in any gale. 
Nor branding summer suns avail 

To touch thy thousand years of gloom ; 



And gazing on thee, sullen tree, 
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, 
I seem to fail from out my blood 

And grow incorporate into thee. 







III. 








SORROW, cruel fellowbhii), 

O priestess in the vaults of Death, 
O sweet and bitter in a breath. 

What whispers from thy lying lip? 



" The stars," she whispers, " blindly run; 

A web is woven across the sky ; 

From out waste places comes a cry, 
And murmurs from the dying sun : 



" And all the phantom, Nature, stands — 
With all the music in her tone, 
A hollow echo of my own, — 

A hollow form with empty hands." 



And shall I take a thing so blind, 
Embrace her as my natural good ; 
Or crush her, like a vice of blood. 

Upon the threshold of the mind? 




IV. 



ifoi^^. 





O SLEEP I give my powers away ; 

My will is bondsman to the dark; 

I sit within a helmless bark, 
And with my heart I muse and say : 



O heart, how fares it with thee now, 

That thou shouldst fail from thy desire, 
Who scarcely darest to inquire, 

" What is it makes me beat so low? " 



Something it is which thou hast lost, 
Some pleasure from thine early years. 
* ^ Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, 

That grief hath shaken into frost ! 



Such clouds of nameless trouble cross 
All night below the darken'd eyes; 
With morning wakes the will, and cries, 

" Thou shalt not be the fool of loss." 






13 



^&^ 



V. 





SOMETIMES hold it half a sin 
To put in words the grief I feel ; 
For words, like Nature, half reveal 

And half conceal the soul within. 

But, for the unquiet heart and brain, 
A use in measured language lies; 
The sad mechanic exercise. 

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. 

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er. 
Like coarsest clothes against the cold ; 
But that large grief which these enfold 

Is given in outline and no more. 



14 




VI. 



NE writes that ''Other friends 
remain," 
That " Loss is common to the 

race " — 
And common is the common- 
place, 
And vacant chaff well meant for trrain. 



That loss is common would not make 
My own less bitter, rather more : 
Too common ! Never morning wore 

To eveninir but some heart did break. 



O father, wheresoe'er thou be. 

Who pledgest now thy gallant son, 
A shot, ere half thy draught be done, 

Hath still'd the life that beat from thee. 



O mother, praying Ciod will save 

Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow'd. 
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud 

Drops in his vast and wandering grave. 
15 



Ye know no more than I who wrought 
At that last hour to please him well ; 
Who mused on all I had to tell, 

And something written, something thought; 

Expecting still his advent home; 
And ever met him on his way 
With wishes, thinking, " here to-day," 

Or " here to-morrow will he come." 

O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove. 
That sittest ranging golden hair; 
And glad to find thyself so fair, 

Poor child, that waitest for thy love ! 

For now her father's chimney glows 

In expectation of a guest ; 

And thinking " this will please him best," 
She takes a riband or a rose ; 




For he will see them on to-night ; 

And with the thought her color burns ; 

And, having left the glass, she turns 
Once more to set a ringlet right ; 

And, even when she turn'd, the curse 
Had fallen, and her future lord 
Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford. 

Or kill'd in falling from his horse. 

O what to her shall be the end? 

And what to me remains of good? 

To her per];)etual maidenhood. 
And unto me no second friend. 



17 



VII. 




ARK house, by which once more I stand 
Here in the long unlovely street, 
Doors, where my heart was used to 
heat 
So quickly, waiting for a hand, 



A hand that can be claspt no more — 
Behold me, for I cannot sleep. 
And like a guilty thing I creep 

At earliest morning to the door. 



He is not here ; but far away 

The noise of life begins again, 
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain 

On the bald street breaks the blank day. 





VIII. 

HAPPY lover who has come 

To look on her that loves him 

well, 
Who 'lights and rings the gate- 
way bell, 
And learns her gone and far from home, — 

He saddens, all the magic light 

Dies off at once from bovver and hall, 
And all the place is dark, and all 

The chambers emptied of delight : 

So find I every pleasant spot 

In which we two were wont to meet. 
The field, the chamber, and the street, 

For all is dark where thou art not. 



Yet as that other, wandering there 
In those deserted walks, may find 
A flower beat with rain and wind, 

Which once she foster' d up with care ; 





!fcT4#:i- -lautl 



So seems it in my deep regret, 

my forsaken heart, with thee 
And this poor flower of poesy 

Which, little cared for, fades not yet. 

But since it pleased a vanish'd eye, 

1 go to plant it on his tomb, 
That if it can it there may bloom, 

Or, dying, there at least may die. 




IX. 




AIR shij), that from the Italian shore 
Sailest the placid ocean-plains 
With my lost Arthur's loved re- 
mains, 
Spread thy full wings, and waft him 
o'er. 



So draw him home to those that mourn 
In vain ; a favorable speed 
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead 

Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn. 

All night no ruder air perplex 

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright 
As our pure love, thro' early light 

Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. 

Sphere all your lights around, above; 
Sleep, gentle heavens, before 

the prow ; 
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps 
now, 
My friend, the brother of my love ; 





My Arthur, whom I shall not see 
Till all my widovv'd race be run 
Dear as the mother to the son, 

More than my brothers are to me. 




X. 




HEAR the noise about thy keel ; 
I hear the bell struck in the night 
I see the cabin-window bright ; 
I see the sailor at the wheel. 

Thou bring' St the sailor to his wife, 

And travell'd men from foreign lands; 
And letters unto trembling hands; 

And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life. 

So bring him : we have idle dreams : 
This look of quiet flatters thus 
Our home-bred fancies : O to us, 

The fools of habit, sweeter seems 

To rest beneath the clover sod. 

That takes the sunshine and the rains, 
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 

The chalice of the grapes of God, 



23 



Than if with thee the roaring wells 

Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine, 
And hands so often claspt in mine 

Should toss with tangle and with shells. 




24 



XL 




c 



ALM is the morn without a sound, 
Cahii as to suit a cahner grief, 
And only thro' the faded leaf 

The chestnut pattering to the ground; 



Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 
And on these dews that drench the furze, 
And all tlie silvery gossamers 

That twinkle into crreen and trold ; 



Calm and still light on yon great plain 
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, 
25 



And crowded farms and lessening towers, 
To mingle with the bounding main ; 

Calm and deep peace in this wide air, 
These leaves that redden to the fall ; 
And in my heart, if calm at all. 

If any calm, a calm despair : 

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, 

And waves that sway themselves in rest. 
And dead calm in that noble breast 

Which heaves but with the heaving deep. 



26 



XII. 







,£< ^Jf^^ 



^/fO, as a dove when up she springs 



To bear thro' heaven a tale of 
woe, 
Some dolorous message knit below 
The wild pulsation of her wings. 

Like her I go ; I cannot stay ; 
I leave this mortal ark behind, 
A weight of nerves without a mind. 

And leave the cliffs, and haste away 

O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large, 

And reach the glow of southern skies, 
And see the sails at distance rise, 

And linger weeping on the marge. 

And saying, " Comes he thus, my friend ? 
Is this the end of all my care ? " 
And circle moaning in the air, 

" Is this the end ? Is this the end ? " 
27 



And forward dart again, and play 
About the prow, and back return 
To where the body sits, and learn 

That I have been an hour away. 




28 



XIII. 




EARS of the widower, 
when he sees 
A late-lost form that 

sleep reveals, 
And moves his doubt- 
ful arms, and feels 
Her place is empty, fall like these; 

Which weep a loss for ever new, 

A void where heart on heart reposed ; 
And, where warm hands have prest and 
closed. 

Silence, till I be silent too ; 

^^'hich weep the comrade of my choice, 
An awful thought, a life removed, 
The human-hearted man I loved, 

A spirit, not a breathing voice. 

Come, Time, and teach me, many years, 

I do not suffer in a dream ; 

For now so strange do these things seem, 
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears, 
29 



My fancies time to rise on wing, 

And glance about the approaching sails, 
As tho' they brought but merchants' bales, 

And not the burthen that they bring. 




30 




XIV. 

F ONE should bring me this 
report, 
That thou hadst touch 'd 



Aflr,' laV WN the land to-day, 

^ 'W'ifi ^ liln^JBi' And I went down i 






unto the 



quay, 
And found thee lying in the port; 



And standing, muffled round with woe, 
Should see thy passengers in rank 
Come stepping lightly down the plank. 

And beckoning imto those they know; 

And if along with these should come 
The man I held as half-divine. 
Should strike a sudden hand in mine, 

And ask a thousand things of home ; 

And I should tell him all my pain, 

Arid how my life had droop 'd of late. 
And he should sorrow o'er my state 

And marvel what possess'd my brain ; 



31 



And I perceived no touch of change, 
No hint of death in all his frame, 
But found him all in all the same, 

I should not feel it to be strange. 




32 








NIGHT the winds begin to rise 
And roar from yonder drooping 

day : 
The last red leaf is whirl 'd away, 
The rooks are blown about the skies ; 

st crack 'd, tlie waters curl'd, 
:attle huddled on the lea ; 
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree 
The sunbeam strikes along the world : 
33 



V 



And but for fancies, which aver 
That all thy motions gently pass 
Athwart a plane of molten glass, 

I scarce could brook the strain and stir 

That makes the barren branches loud ; 
And but for fear it is not so, 
The wild unrest that lives in woe 

Would dote and ])ore on yonder cloud 

That rises upward always higher. 

And onward drags a laboring breast. 
And topples round the dreary west, 

A looming bastion fringed with fire. 






^y f 



^V^' 



34 



XVI. 




^-iss* 



HAT words are these have fallen from 
me ? 
Can calm despair and wild unrest 
Be tenants of a single breast, 

Or Sorrow such a channel inf( be ? 



Or doth she only seem to take 

The touch of change in calm or storm, 
But knows no more of transient form 

In her deep self than some dead lake 

That holds the shadow of a lark 

Hung in the shadow of a heaven ? 
Or has the shock, so harshly given, 

Confused me like the unhappy bark 



35 



That strikes by night a craggy shelf, 
And staggers blindly ere she sink ? 
And stunn'd me from my power to think 

And all my knowledge of myself; 

And made me that delirious man 
Whose fancy fuses old and new, 
And flashes into false and true, 

And mingles all without a plan ? 




36 



XVII. 



r - ^" 






,M 






= -y 




HOU comest, much wept 

for ; such a breeze 
Compel!' d thy canvas, and 
my prayer 
Was as the whisper of an air 
To breathe thee over lonely seas. 

For I in spirit saw thee move 
La^ Thro' circles of the bounding sky, 
Week after week : the days go by : 
Come quick, thou bringest all I love. 

Henceforth, wherever thou mayst roam, 
My blessing, like a line of light. 
Is on the waters day and night, 

beacon guards thee home. 




./;. 



So may whatever tempest mars 

Mid-ocean spare thee, sacred bark, 
And balmy drops in summer dark 

Slide from the bosom of the stars, 

So kind an office hath been done, 

Such precious relics brought by thee, 
The dust of him I shall not see 

Till all my vvidow'd race be run. 



CT^r^ 




38 



XVIII. 




well ; 'tis something; we may 
stand 
Where he in English earth 
is laid, 
And from his ashes may be made 
The violet of his native land. 

"Tis little ; but it looks in truth 

As if the quiet bones were blest, 
Among familiar names to rest 

And in the places of his youth. 

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head 
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep, 
And come, whatever loves to weep, 

And hear the ritual of the dead. 

Ah vet, even yet, if this might be, 
I, falling on his faithful heart. 
Would breathing thro' his lips impart 

The life that almost dies in me; 

39 



^S 



That (lios not, Init cmluios with pain, 
And sUiwlv forms the tirnier mind, 
Treasuring the look it cannot find, 

The words that are not heard again. 



dfef :||^ 



40 



XIX. 



*^>v 



'^aw - ^ _ 



^"' 




K Danube to the Severn gave 
The darken 'd heart that beat '• 

no more ; 
They laid him by the pleasant -'-{^ 
shore, ''■^ 

And in the hearini.{ of the wave. y'^ 



There twice a day the Severn fills ; 
The salt sea- water passes by, 
And hushes half the babbling Wye, 

And makes a silence in the hills. 



The Wye is hush'd nor moved along, 
And hush'd my deepest grief of all, 
When, fill'd with tears that cannot fall, 

I brim with sorrow drowning: sonii. 



41 



The tide flows down, the wave again 
Is vocal in its wooded walls ; 
My deeper anguish also falls, 

And I can speak a little then. 




42 



XX. 

HE lesser griefs that may be said, 
That breathe a thousand tender 

vows, 
Are but as servants in a house 
Where lies the master newly dead ; 




Who speak their feeling as it is. 

And weep the fulness from the mind : 
" It will be hard," they say, " to find 

Another service such as this." 



My lighter moods are like to these. 
That out of words a comfort win; 
But there are other griefs within. 

And tears that at their fountain freeze; 



For by the hearth the children sit 
Cold in that atmosphere of death. 
And scarce endure to draw the breath. 

Or like to noiseless phantoms flit : 



43 



But open converse is there none, 
So much the vital spirits sink 
To see the vacant chair, and think, 

*' How good ! how kind ! and he is gone. 




44 



XXI. 





M. SING to him that rests below, 

I And, since the grasses round me 

* , wave, 

\ I take the grasses of the grave, 

And make them pipes whereon to blow. 

The traveller hears me now and then, 
And sometimes harshly will he speak . 
" This fellow would make weakness weak, 

And melt the waxen hearts of men." 



Another answers, " Let him be, 

He loves to make parade of pain. 
That with his piping he may gain 

The praise that comes to constancy." 

A third is wroth : " Is this an hour 
For private sorrow's barren song. 
When more and more the people throng 

The chairs and thrones of civil power ? 



45 



/ 



" A time to sicken and to swoon, 

When Science reaches forth her arms 
To feel from world to world, and charms 

Her secret from the latest moon ? " 

Behold, ye speak an idle thing: 
Ye never knew the sacred dust : 
I do but sing because I must, 

And pipe but as the linnets sing : 

And one is glad ; her note is gay. 

For now her little ones have ranged ; 
And one is sad ; her note is changed, 

Because her brood is stolen away. 




46 



XXII. 




HE path by which we twain did go, 
Which led by tracts that pleased 

us well, 
Thro' four sweet years arose and 
fell, 
From flower to flower, from snow to snow; 



And we with singing cheer'd the way. 
And, crown'd with all the season lent, 
From April on to April went. 

And glad at heart from May to May : 




47 



But where the path wewalk'd began 
To slant the fifth autumnal slope, 
As we descended following Hope, 

There sat the Shadow fear'd of man ; 

Who broke our fair companionship. 

And spread his mantle dark and cold, 
And wrapt thee formless in the fold, 

And dull'd the murmur on thy lip, 

And bore thee where I coukl not see 
Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste. 
And think that somewhere in the waste 

The Shadow sits and waits for me. 




XXIII. 





x^z:^ 



OW, sometimes in my sorrow shut, 
Or breaking into song by fits, 
Alone, alone, to where he sits, 

The Shadow cloak'd from head to 
foot. 



Who keeps the keys of all the creeds, 
I wander, often falling lame. 
And looking back to whence I came 

Or on to where the pathway leads ; 



And crying. How changed from where it ran 
Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb. 
But all the lavish hills would hum 

The murmur of a happy Pan : 



49 



^fi>.' 




When each by turns was guide to each, 
And Fancy light from Fancy caught, 
/ And Thought leapt out to wed with 
Thought 
Ere Thought could wed itself with 
Speech ; 

And all we met was fair and good, 

And all was good that Time could 

bring, 
And all the secret of the Spring 

Moved in the chambers of the blood : 




And many an old philosophy 

On Argive heights divinely sang. 
And round us all the thicket rang 

To many a flute of Arcady. 






rSj^ 




XXIV. 




ND was the day of my 
delight 
As pure and perfect 

as I say ? 
The very source and 
fount of day 
Is dash'd with wandering 
isles of niarht. 



If all was good and fair we met, 
This earth had been the Paradise 
It never look'd to human eyes 

Since our first sun arose and set. 

And is it that the haze of grief 

Makes former gladness loom so great 
The lowness of the present state, 

That sets the jjast in this relief ? j 



Or that the past will always win 
A glory from its being far, 
And orb into the perfect star 

We saw not when we moved therein ? 
51 




XXV. 



KNOW that this was Life, — the track 
Whereon with equal feet we fared ; 
And then, as now, the day prepared 
The daily burden for the back. 



But this it was that made me move 
As light as carrier-birds in air; 
/ I loved the weight I had to bear, 
Because it needed help of Love : / 



Nor could I weary, heart or limb, 

When mighty Love would cleave in twain 
The lading of a single pain. 

And part it, giving half to him. 



52 



XXVI. 



r 




AX^-'"/^ .<^ TILL onward winds the dreary 

I with it; for I long to prove 
^'X / No lapse of moons can canker 
Love, 
Whatever fickle tongues may say. j 

And if that eye which watches guilt 
And goodness, and hath power to see 
Within the green the moulder' d tree, 

And towers fallen as soon as built — 



O, if indeed that eye foresee 
Or see (in Plim is no before) 
In more of life true life no more 

And Love the indifference to be, 



53 



Then might I find, ere yet the morn 
Breaks hither over Indian seas, 
That Shadow waiting with the keys,. 

To shroud me from my proper scorn. 




54 



XXVII. 




ENVY not in any moods 

The captive void of noble rage, 
The linnet born within the 
cage, 
That never knew the summer 
woods : 



I envv not the beast that takes 

His license in the field of time, 
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime. 
To whom a conscience never wakes ; 



Nor, what may count itself as blest, 
The heart that never plighted troth 
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth ; 

Nor any want-begotten rest. 



I hold it true, whate'er befall ; 
I feel it, when I sorrow most : 
'Tis better to have loved and lost 

Than never to have loved at all. 



55 



XXVIII. 





HE time draws near the birth of Christ : 
The moon is hid ; the night is still ; 
The Christmas bells from hill to hill 

Answer each other in the mist. 



Vja, J 



Four voices of four hamlets round, 

From far and near, on mead and moor, 
Swell out and fail, as if a door 

Were shut between me and the sound : 



Each voice four changes on the wind, 
That now dilate, and now decrease. 
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, 

Peace and goodwill, to all mankind. 



56 



This year I slept and woke with pain, 
I almost wish'd no more to wake, 
And that my hold on life would break 

Before I heard those bells auain : 



But they my troubled spirit rule. 

For they controU'd me when a boy; 
They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy, 

The merry, merry bells of Yule. 



57 




XXIX. 



ITH such compelling cause to grieve 
As daily vexes household peace, 
And chains regret to his de- 
cease, 
How dare we keep our Christmas- 
eve : 



Which brings no more a welcome guest 
To enrich the threshold of the night 
With shower' d largess of delight 

In dance and song and game and jest ? 



Yet go, and while the holly boughs 
Entwine the cold baptismal font. 
Make one wreath more for Use and Wont, 

That guard the portals of the house ; 



Old sisters of a day gone by, 

Gray nurses, loving nothing new; 
Why should they miss their yearly due 

Before their time ? They too will die. 

58 



XXX. 




ITH trembling fingers did we 
weave 
The holly round the Christ- 
mas hearth ; 
A rainy cloud possess'd the earth, 
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve. 



At our old pastimes in the hall 

We gambol I'd, making vain pretence 
Of gladness, with an awful sense 

Of one mute Shadow watching all. 

We paused : the winds were in the beech : 
We heard them sweep the winter land; 
And in a circle hand-in-hand 

Sat silent, looking each at each. 



Then echo-like our voices rang ; 

We sung, tho' every eye was dim, 
A merry song we sang with him 

Last year : impetuously we sang. 
59 



We ceased : a gentler feeling crept 
Upon us : surely rest is meet : 
"They rest," we said, " their sleep is 
sweet," 

And silence follow'd, and we wept. 

Our voices took a higher range ; 

Once more we sang : " They do not die 
Nor lose their mortal sympathy, 

Nor change to us, although they change; 

" Rapt from the fickle and the frail 
With gather' d ])o\ver, yet the same. 
Pierces the keen seraphic flame 

From orb to orb, from veil to veil." 

Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, 

Draw forth the cheerful day from night ; 
O Father, touch the east, and light 

The light that shone when Hope was born. 



60 



XXXI . 




HEN Lazarus left his charnel- 
cave, 
^^ And home to Mary's house 

-^ W^; return' d, 

Was this demanded — if he yearn' d 
To hear her weeping by his grave ? 

'•' Where wert thou, brother, those four 
days?" 
There lives no record of reply, 
Which telling what it is to die 

Had surely added praise to praise. 

From every house the neighbors met. 

The streets were fill'd with joyful sound, 
A solemn gladness even crown' d 

The purple brows of Olivet. 
6i 



Behold a man raised up by Christ! 

The rest remaineth unreveal'd; 

He told it not, or something seal'd 
The lips of that Evangelist. 




62 



XXXII. 

S^^^^ER eyes are homes of silent prayer, 
'^tr^ M ^^^ other thought her mind 

^I^S P admits 

i^^pl 1 But, he was dead, and there he 

'-'''*-' 1^^ sits, 

And he that brought him back is there. 



Then one dee]i love doth supersede 
All other, when her ardent gaze 
Roves from the living brother's face, 

And rests upon the Life indeed. 

All subtle thought, all curious fears, 
Borne down by gladness so complete, 
She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet 

AVith costly spikenard and with tears. 



Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 
Whose loves in higher love endure ; 
What souls possess themselves so pure, 

Or is there blessedness like theirs ? 



63 



XXXIII. 




THOU that after toil and storm 

Mayst seem to have reach' d a purer air, 
Whose faith has centre everywhere, 

Nor cares to fix itself to form. 



Leave thou thy sister when she prays, 
Her early Heaven, her happy views ; 
Nor thou with shadow' d hint confuse 

A life that leads melodious days. 



Her faith thro' form is pure as thine, 
Her hands are quicker unto good : 
O, sacred be the flesh and blood 

To which she links a truth divine ! 



See thou, that countest reason ripe 
In holding by the law within. 
Thou fail not in a world of sin. 

And even for want of such a type. 



64 



XXXIV. 




own dim life should 
teach me this, 

That life shall live for 
evermore, 

Else earth is darkness 
at the core, 
And dust and ashes all that is ; 



This round of green, this orb of flame. 
Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks 
•In some wild poet, when he works 
Without a conscience or an aim. 



^^'hat then were God to such as I ? 

'Twere hardly worth my while to choose 
Of things all mortal, or to use 

A little patience ere I die ; 

'Twere best at once to sink to peace. 
Like birds the charming serpent draws, 
To drop head-foremost in the jaws a 

Of vacant darkness and to cease. 



65 





XXXV. 

ET if some voice that man could trust 
Should murmur from the narrow house, 
" The cheeks drop in, the body bows; 
Man dies : nor is there hope in dust : " 



Might I not say, " Yet even here. 
But for one hour, O Love, I strive 
To keep so sweet a thing alive " ? 

But I should turn mine ears and hear 



The moanings of the homeless sea, 

The sound of streams that swift or slow 
Draw down Ionian hills, and sow 

The dust of continents to be ; 



And Love would answer with a sigh, 
" The sound of that forgetful shore 
Will change my sweetness more and more, 

Half-dead to know that I shall die." 



66 



O me, what profits it to put 

An idle case ? If Death were seen 
At first as Death, Love had not been, 

Or been in narrowest working shut. 



Mere fellowshij) of sluggish moods, 

Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape 

Had bruised the herb and crush'd the 
grape, 
And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. 



tiA 



67 





XXXVI. 



HO' truths in manliood darkly join, 
Deep-seated in our mystic frame, 
We yield all blessing to the name 

Of Him that made them current coin ; 



Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 
Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale 
Shall enter in at lowly doors. 

And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds. 

More strong than all poetic thought; 



Which he may read that binds the sheaf, 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave. 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave. 

In roarings round the coral reef. 



XXXVII. 



RANIA speaks with darken'd 
brow : 
" Thou pratest here where 
thou art least ; 
This faith has many a purer 
priest, 
uif And many an abler voice than thou. 



■ Go down beside thy native rill, 
On thy Parnassus set thy feet, 
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet 
About the led^res of the hill." 




And my Melpomene replies, 

A touch of shame upon her cheek 
" I am not worthy even to speak 

Of thy prevailing mysteries; 



" For I am but an earthlv Muse, 
• / And owning but a little art 

To lull with song an aching heart, / 
And render human love his dues ; 
69 



" But brooding on the dear one dead, 
And all he said of things divine 
(And dear to me as sacred wine 

To dying lips is all he said), 



" I murmur' d, as I came along, 

Of comfort claspt in truth reveal'd ; 
And loiter'd in the master's field. 

And darken'd sanctities with song." 




70 



XXXVIII. 




r- 



ITH wean- steps I loiter on, 

Tho' always under alter'd skies 
The purple from the distance 
dies, 
My prospect and horizon gone. / 

No joy the blowing season gives, 
The herald melodies of spring. 
But in the songs I love to sing 

A doubtful gleam of solace lives. 



If any care for what is here 

Survive in spirits render' d free. 
Then are these songs I sing of thee 

Not all ungrateful to thine ear. 
71 



M'i'/MM 


KM 


\\ ^mBUMM 


n^^SBii.y 


c^^sf 'n 


"Ir'^kl 


^m 


» 


^^B 


^^ 



XXXIX. 

LD warder of these buried bones, 

And answering now my random stroke 
With fruitful cloud and living smoke, 

Dark yew, that graspest at the stones 



And dippest toward the dreamless head, 
To thee too comes the golden hour 
When flower is feeling after flower ; 

But Sorrow — fixt upon the dead, 



And darkening the dark graves of men, — 
What whisper'd from her lying lips ? 
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips, 

And passes into gloom again. 




XL. 




OULD we forget the widow'd 
hour 
And look on spirits breathed 
away, 
As on a maiden in the day 
When first she wears her orange-flower ! 

When crown'd with blessing she doth rise 
To take her latest leave of home, 
And hopes and light regrets that come 

Make April of her tender eyes ; 

And doubtful joys the father move, 
And tears are on the mother's face, 
As parting with a long embrace 

She enters other realms of love; 

Her office there to rear, to teach, 
Becoming as is meet and fit 
A link among the days, to knit 

The generations each with each : 
73 



And, doubtless, unto thee is given 
A life that bears immortal fruit 
In those great offices that suit 

The full-grown energies of heaven. 



Ay me, the difference I discern ! 
How often shall her old fireside 
Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride, 

How often she herself return, 



And tell them all they would have told. 
And bring her babe, and make her boast, 
Till even those that miss'd her most 

Shall count new things as dear as old : 

/I 

' But thou and I have shaken hands. 

Till growing winters lay nie low; f 

My paths are in the fields I know. 

And thine in undiscover'd lands. 



74 



XLI. 



C, ' ?'"^ ^ '> •■ H^ spirit ere our fatal loss 
^^"^^^^xV^-yT^ Did ever rise from high to 




higher ; 
As mounts the heavenward 
altar-fire, 
As flies the lighter thro' the gross. 

But thou art turn'd to something 
strange, 

And I have lost the links that bound 
Thy changes ; here upon the ground, 
No more partaker of thy change. 



Deep folly ! yet that this could be — 

That I could wing my will with might 
To leap the grades of life and light, 

And flash at once, my friend, to thee. 



For tho' my nature rarely yields 

To that vague fear implied in death. 
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath, 

The howlings from forgotten fields ; 
75 




Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor 

An inner troul)le I behold, 

A spectral doubt which makes me cold, 
That I shall be thy mate no more, 



Tho' following with an upward mind 
The wonders that have come to thee, 
Thro' all the secular to-be, 

But evermore a life behind. 



76 




XLII. 



VEX my heart with fancies dim : 
He still outstript me in the 

race; 
It was but unity of place 
That made me dream I rank'd with him. 



And so may place retain us still, 
And he the much-beloved again, 
A lord of large experience, train 

To riper growth the mind and will : 



And what delights can equal those 
That stir the spirit's inner deeps. 
When one that loves, but knows not, reaps 

A truth from one that loves and knows ? 






77 




XLIII. 



F SLEEP and Death be truly one; 
And every spirit's folded bloom 
Thro' all its intervital gloom 

In some long trance should slumber on 



Unconscious of the sliding hour, 
Bare of the body, might it last, 
And silent traces of the past 

Be all the colour of the flower : 



So then were nothing lost to man ; 
So that still garden of the souls 
In many a figured leaf enrolls 

The total world since life began; 



And love will last as pure and whole 
As when he loved me here in Time, 
And at the spiritual prime 

Rewaken with the dawning soul. 



78 




XLIV. 



OW fares it with the happy 
dead ? 
For here the man is more 
f and more ; 

But he forgets the days be- 
fore 
God shut the doorways of his head. 

The days have vanish'd, tone and tint, 
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense 
Gives out at times (he knows not whence) 

A little flash, a mystic hint; 

And in the long harmonious years 

(If Death so taste Lethean springs) 
May some dim touch of earthly things 

Surprise thee ranging with thy peers. 



If such a dreamy touch should fall, 

O turn thee round, resolve the doubt ; 
My guardian angel will speak out 

In that high place, and tell thee all. 
79 



<M 



XLV. 



HE baby new to earth and sky, 




What time his tender pahii is prest 
Against the circle of the breast, 
Has never thought that " this is I : " 



But as he grows he gathers much, 

And learns the use of " I," and " me," 
And finds " I am not what I see, 

And other than the things I touch." 



So rounds he to a separate mind 

From whence clear memory may begin, 
As thro' the frame that binds him in 

His isolation grows defined. 



This use may lie in blood and breath, 
Which else were fruitless of their due, 
Had man to learn himself anew 

Beyond the second birth of death. 



80 



XLVI. 






E ranging down this lower 

track, 
The path we came by, thorn 

and flower. 
Is shadow' d by the growing 

hour. 
Lest life should fail in looking back. 




So be it : there no shade can last 

In that deep dawn behind the tomb. 
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom 

The eternal landscape of the past ; 

A lifelong tract of time reveal 'd ; 

The fruitful hours of still increase; 

Days order' d in a wealthy peace. 
And those five years its richest field. 

O Love, thy province were not large, 
A bounded field, nor stretching far; 
Look also, Love, a brooding star, 

A rosy warmth from marge to marge ! 




XLVII. 

HA r each, who seems a separate whole, 
Should move his rounds and, fusing all 
The skirts of self again, should fall 

Remerging in the general Soul, 



Is faith as vague as all unsweet : 
Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside, 

And I shall know him when we meet; 



And we shall sit at endless feast, 
Enjoying each the other's good : 
What vaster dream can hit the mood 

Of Love on earth ? He seeks at least 



Upon the last and sharpest height, 
Before the spirits fade away. 
Some landing-place, to clasp and say, 

" Farewell ! We lose ourselves in light." 



82 



XLVIII. 



X^r.^^y ^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^y^> of Sorrow born, 
'■¥ fm ) ^^ ere taken to be such as closed 

Grave doubts and answers here pro- 
posed, 
Then these were such as men might 
scorn. 




Her care is not to part and prove : 

She takes, when harsher moods remit. 
What slender shade of doubt may flit, 

And makes it vassal unto love; 



And hence, indeed, she sports with words. 
But better serves a wholesome law, 
And holds it sin and shame to draw 

The deepest measure from the chords ; 



Nor dare she trust a larger lay, 
But rather loosens from the lip 
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 

Their wings in tears and skim away. 

83 




XLIX. 





ROM art, from nature, from the 8( hools, 
Let random influences glance, 
Like light in many a shiver' d lance 

That breaks about the dappled pools. 



The lightest wave of thought shall lisp, 
The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe, 
The slightest air of song shall breathe 

To make the sullen surface crisp. 



84 













r 



And look thy look, and go thy way, 

But blame not thou the winds that make 
The seeming-wanton ripple break, 

The tender-pencil I'd shadow play. 



Beneath all fancied hopes and fears 
Ay me, the sorrow deepens down, 
Whose muffled motions blindly drown 

The bases of my life in tears. 



85 




L. 



E NEAR me when my light is low, 

When the blood creeps, and the 

nerves prick 
And tingle ; and the heart is sick, 
And all the wheels of being slow. 

Be near me when the sensuous frame 

Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust; 
And Time a maniac scattering dust, 

And Life a Fury slinging flame. 

Be near me when my faith is dry. 
And men the flies of latter spring. 
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing 

And weave their petty cells and die. 

Be near me when I fade away. 

To point the term of human strife, 
And on the low dark verge of life 

The twilight of eternal day. 





LI. 



O WE indeed desire the 

dead 
Should still be near us at 
our side ? 
Is there no baseness we would 
hide? 
\() inner Mleness that we dread ? 



Shall he for whose applause I strove, 
I had such reverence for his blame, 
See with clear eye some hidden shame 

And I be lessen'd in his love ? 



I wrong the grave with fears untrue : 

Shall love be blamed for want of faith ? 
There must be wisdom with great Death : 

The dead shall look me thro' and thro'. 



Be near us when we climb or fall : 

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours 
With larger other eyes than ours, 

To make allowance for us all. 

87 




LII. 

CANNOT love thee as I ought, 

For love reflects the thing beloved ; 
My words are only words, and moved 

Upon the topmost froth of thought. 

" Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song," 
The Spirit of true love replied; 
" Thou canst not move me from thy side, 

Nor human frailty do me wrong. 



" What keeps a spirit wholly true 
To that ideal which he bears ? 
What record ? not the sinless years 

That breathed beneath the Syrian blue : 

" So fret not, like an idle girl. 

That life is dash'd with flecks of sin. 
Abide : thy wealth is gather'd in, 

When Time hath sunder' d shell from ]jearl." 





" '' C)W many a father have I seen, 
A sober man, among his 
boys, 
Whose youth was full of foolish 
'''■'^ noise, 

Who wears his manhood hale and 
green ; 



I And dare we to this fancy give, 

That had the wild oat not been 

sown, 
The soil, left barren, scarce had 
grown 
,(|j The grain by which a man may live ? 




Or, if we held the doctrine sound 
For life outliving heats of youth, 
Yet who would preach it as a truth 

To those that eddy round and round ? 



Hold thou the good ; define it well : 

For fear divine Philosophy 

Should push beyond her mark, and be 
Procuress to the Lords of Hell. 




!i^J 




LIV. 

YET we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 



That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That not one life shall be destroy' d, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When Clod hath made the pile complete; 

That not a worm is clo\en in vain ; 
That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire, 

Or but subserves another's gain. 



Behold, we know not anything; 

I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off — at last, to all, 

And every winter change to spring. 

So runs my dream : but what am I ? 

An infant crying in the night ; 

An infant crying for the light; 
And with no language but a cry. 
91 




LV. 




ft^ 



~-^^- 



vjjt- 



t 



( 



HE wish, that of the living whole 
No life may fail beyond the 

grave, <, ^ 

Derives it not from what we have 
The likest God within our soul? 

Are God and Nature then at strife. 

That Nature lends such evil dreams ? 
So careful of the type she seems, 

So careless of the single life, 

That I, considering everywhere 

Her secret meaning in her deeds, 
And finding that of fifty seeds 

She often brings but one to bear, 

I falter where I firmly trod. 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope thro' darkness up to God, 
92 



I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 



i it' 

f 






93 




LVI. 

CAREFUL of the type ? " but no. 
From scarped cliff and quarried 

stone 
She cries, " A thousand types are 
gone : 
I care for nothing, all shall yo. 



Thou makest thine appeal to me : 
I bring to life, I bring to death; 
The spirit does but mean the breath 
1 know no more." And he, shall he. 



Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 

\V'ho built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 



Who trusted God was love indeed 
And love Creation's final law — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 

\Vith ravin, shriek'd against his creed — 
94 



Who loved, who suffer' d countless ills, 
Who battled for the True, the Just, 
Be blown about the desert dust, 

Or seal'd within the iron hills ? 



No more ? A monster then, a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime. 
That tare each other in their slime, 

Were mellow music match'd with him. 



O life as futile, then, as frail ! 

O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 

What hope of answer, or redress ? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil. 



95 



LVII. 




P^ACE ; come away : the song of woe 
Is after all an earthly song : 
Peace ; come away : we do him 
wrong 

To sing so wildly : let us go. 



Come, let us go : your cheeks are 
pale ; 

But half my life I leave behind : 
Methinks my friend is richly shrined; 
But I shall pass ; my work will fail. 



Yet in these ears, till hearing dies. 
One set slow bell will seem to toll 
The passing of the sweetest soul 

That ever look'd with human eyes. 



I hear it now, and o'er and o'er, 
Eternal greetings to the dead; 
And " Ave, Ave, Ave," said, 

"Adieu, adieu," for evermore. 
96 




LVIII. 



N those sad words I took farewell : 
Like echoes in sepulchral halls, 
As drop by drop the water falls 

In vaults and catacombs, they fell ; 



And, falling, idly broke the peace 

Of hearts that beat from day to day, 
Half-conscious of their dying clay. 

And those cold crypts where they shall 
cease. 



The high Museanswer'd : " Wherefore grieve 
Thy brethren with a fruitless tear ? 
Abide a little longer here. 

And thou shalt take a nobler leave." 




97 



1 




^feb 


1 ^iA^ 


ii 


m 


m. \l--A 


SjB 


^ 


W>m 


^^m. 



LIX. 

SORROW, wilt thou live with me 
No casual mistress, but a wife. 
My bosom-friend and half of life; 

As I confess it needs must be ? 



O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood, 
Be sometimes lovely like a bride, 
And put thy harsher moods aside. 

If thou wilt have me wise and good ? 



My centred passion cannot move. 
Nor will it lessen from to-day; 
Eut I'll have leave at times to play 

As with the creature of my love ; 



And set thee forth, for thou art mine, 
With so much hope for years to come, 
'J'hat, howsoe'er I know thee, some 

Could hardlv tell what name were thine. 



LX. 



^Ui&t 





E past; a soul of nobler tone ; 

My spirit loved and loves him yet, 
Like some poor girl whose heart is set 
On one whose rank exceeds her own. 



He mixing with his proper sphere, 
She finds the baseness of her lot, 
Half jealous of she knows not what. 

And envying all that meet him there. 

The little village looks forlorn; 
She sighs amid her narrow days. 
Moving about the household ways. 

In that dark house where she was born. 



The foolish neighbors come and go, 
And tease her till the day draws by : 
At night she weeps, " How vain am I ! 

How should he love a thing so low ? " 
99 

LofC. 




LXI. 



F, in thy second state sublime, 

Tliy ransom' d reason change 

replies 
With all the circle of the wise, 
perfect flower of human time ; 



And if thou cast thine eyes below, 
How dimly character'd and slight. 
How dwarf'd a growth of cold and night. 

How blanch'd with darkness must I grow ! 

Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore, 

Where thy first form was made a man ; 
I loved thee. Spirit, and love, nor can 

The soul of Shakspeare love thee more. 




LXII. 



^-/utOilirrx 




HO' if an eye that's downward 
cast 
Could make thee somewhat 
blench or fail, 
Then be my love an idle tale, 
And fading legend of the past; 



And thou, as one that once declined, 
When he was little more than boy. 
On some unworthy heart with joy, 

But lives to wed an equal mind; 



And breathes a novel world, the while 
His other passion wholly dies. 
Or in the light of deeper eyes 

Is matter for a flying smile. 




LXIII. 





ET pity for a horse o'er-driven, 

And love in which my hound has part, 
Can hang no weight upon my heart 
In its assumptions up to heaven ; 



And I am so much more than these 

As thou, perchance, art more than I, 
And yet I spare them sympathy, 

And I would set their pains at ease. 



So mayst thou watch me where I weep, 
As, unto vaster motions bound, 
The circuits of thine orbit round 

A higher height, a deeper deep. 



LXIV. 




.OST thou look back on what 
hath been, 
As some divinely gifted 
man, 
Whose life in low estate 
began 
And on a simple village green ; 




Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 

And grasps the skirts of happy chance. 
And breasts the blows of circumstance, 

And grapples with his evil star; 

Who makes by force his merit known 
And lives to clutch the golden keys, 
To mould a mighty state's decrees. 

And shape the whisper of the throne ; 



And, moving up from high to higher. 
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope 
The pillar of a people's hope. 

The centre of a world's desire; 
103 



Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, 

When all his active powers are still, 
A distant dearness in the hill, 

A secret sweetness in the stream, / 



The limit of his narrower fate, 

While yet beside its vocal springs 
He play'd at counsellors and kings. 

With one that was his earliest mate; 



Who ploughs with pain his native lea 
And reaps the labour of his hands, 
Or in the furrow musing stands : 

" Does my old friend remember me ? " 






LXV. 



WEET soul, do with me as thou 
wilt; 
I lull a fancy trouble-tost 
^ With " Love's too precious to 
be lost, 
A little grain shall not be spilt." 



And in that solace can I sing, 

Till out of painful phases wrought 
There flutters up a happy thought, 

Self-balanced on a lightsome wine : 



Since we deserved the name of friends. 
And thine effect so lives in me, 
A part of mine may live in thee 

And move thee on to noble ends. 



_j!jfi^»' 



r?.Mf*"'»tf«^,^.,. 




LXVI. 




OU thought my heart too far diseased ; 
You wonder when my fancies play 
To find me gay among the gay, 

Like one with any trifle pleased. 



The shade by which my life was crost, 
Which makes a desert in the mind, 
Has made me kindly with my kind. 

And like to him whose sight is lost; 
1 06 



Whose feet are guided thro' the land, 
Whose jest among his friends is free, 
Who takes the children on his knee. 

And winds their curls about his hand : 



He plays with threads, he beats his chair 
For pastime, dreaming of the sky; 
His inner day can never die. 

His night of loss is always there. 




107 



LXVII. 




r 


r 








r 


"T 








( 












1 




' 




*•- 


■ 








HPCN on my bed the moonlight 

falls, 
I know that in thy place of rest 
* By that broad water of the west, 

There comes a glory on the walls : 



Thy marble bright in dark appears. 
As slowly steals a silver flame 
Along the letters of thy name. 

And o'er the number of thy years. 



The mystic glory swims away ; 

From off my bed the moonlight dies; 
loS 



And closing eaves of wearied eyes 
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray : 



And then I know the mist is drawn 
A lucid veil from coast to coast, 
And in the dark church like a ghost 

Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn. 





LXVIII. 

HEN in the down I sink my head, 

Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my 

breath ; 
Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not 
Death, 
Nor can I dream of thee as dead. 



I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn, 

^Vhen all our path was fresh with dew, 
And all the bugle breezes blew 

Reveillee to the breaking morn. 



But what is this ? I turn about, 
I find a trouble in thine eye, 
AN'hich makes me sad I know not why. 

Nor can my dream resolve the doubt : 



But ere the lark hath left the lea 
I wake, and I discern the truth; 
It is the trouble of my youth 

That foolish sleep transfers to thee. 




LXIX. 

DREAM' D there would be Spring 
no more, 
That Nature's ancient power 

was lost : 
The streets were black with 
smoke and frost, 
They chatter' d trifles at the door. 



I wander'd from the noisy town, 

I found a wood with thorny boughs ; 
I took the thorns to bind my brows, 

I wore them like a civic crown. 



I met with scoffs, I met with scorns 

From youth and babe and hoary hairs ; 
They call'd me in the public squares 

The fool that wears a crown of thorns. 



They call'd me fool, they call'd me child : 
I found an angel of the night ; 
The voice was low, the look was bright ; 

He look'd upon my crown and smiled. 
Ill 



He reach'd the glory of a hand, 

That seem'd to touch it into leaf : 
The voice was not the voice of grief, 

The words were hard to understand. 




LXX. 




CANNOT see the features right, 
When on the gloom I strive to 

paint 
The face I know ; the hues are 
faint 
And mix with hollow masks of 
night ; 



Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought, 
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes, 
A hand that points, and palled shapes 

In shadowy thoroughfares of thought ; 



And crowds that stream from yawning doors, 
And shoals of pucker' d faces drive; 
Dark bulks that tumble half alive. 

And lazy lengths on boundless shores ; 



Till all at once beyond the will 
I hear a wizard music roll, 
And thro' a lattice on the soul 

Looks thy fair face and makes it still. 
"3 



LXXI. 









"j^f^^U? 



LLLP, kinsman thou to death and trance 

And madness, thou hast forged at last 
A night-long present of the past 
In which we went thro' summer France. 

Hadst thou such credit with the soul ? 
Then bring an opiate trebly strong, 
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong, 

That so my jileasure may be whole • 

While now we talk as once we talk'd 

Of men and minds, the dust of change. 
The days that grow to something strange, 

In walking as of old we walk'd 

Beside the river's wooded reach, 

The fortress, and the mountain ridge, 
The cataract flashing from the bridge, 

The breaker breaking on the beach. 
114 



LXXII. 




ISEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, 
And howlest, issuing out of night. 
With blasts that blow the poplar 
white. 
And lash with storm the streaming pane ? 



Day, when my crown 'd estate begun 
To pine in that reverse of doom. 
Which sicken'd every living bloom. 

And blurr'd the splendour of the sun; 

Who usherest in the dolorous hour 

With thy quick tears that make the rose 
Pull sideways, and the daisy close 

Her crimson fringes to the shower; 



Who mightst have heaved a windless flame 
Up the deep east, or, whispering, play'd 
115 



A chequer-work of beam and shade 
Along the hills, yet look'd the same, 



As wan, as chill, as wild as now ; 

Day, mark'das with some hideous crime, 
When the dark hand struck down thro' 
time, 

And cancell'd nature's best : but thou, 



Lift as thou mayst thy burthen'd brows 

Thro' clouds that drench the morning star. 
And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar. 

And sow the sky with flying boughs. 



And up thy vault with roaring sound 

Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day; 
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray. 

And hide thy shame beneath the ground. 




ii6 



LXXIII. 




O MANY worlds, so much 
to do, 
So little done, such 

things to be, 
How know I what had 
need of thee, 
For thou wert strong as thou wert true ? 



The fame is quench'd that I foresaw, 

The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath 
I curse not Nature, no, nor Death ; 

For nothing is that errs from law. 



We pass ; the path that each man trod 
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds. 
What fame is left for human deeds 

In endless age ? It rests with God. 



O hollow wraith of dying fame. 

Fade wholly, while the soul exults. 
And self-infolds the large results 

Of force that would have forged a name. 




LXXIV. 



S SOMETIMES in a dead man's face, 
=S^ To those that watch it more 
and more, 
A likeness, hardly seen before, 
Comes out — to some one of his race ; 



So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, 
I see thee what thou art, and know 
Thy likeness to the wise below, 

Thy kindred with the great of old. 



But there is more that I can see. 
And what I see I leave unsaid. 
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made 

His darkness beautiful with thee. 



Ii8 



LXXV. 




LEAVE thy praises iinexpress'd 

In verse that brings myself relief, 
And by the measure of my grief 
I leave thy greatness to be guess' d. 



What practice howsoe'er expert 
In fitting aptest words to things, 
Or voice the richest-toned that sings, 

Hath power to give thee as thou wert ? 



I care not in these fading days 

To raise a cry that lasts not long, 

And round thee with the breeze of song 

To stir a little dust of praise. 



Thy leaf has perish'd in the green, 

And, while we breathe beneath the sun. 
The world which credits what is done 

Is cold to all that might have been. 
119 



So here shall silence guard thy fame ; 
But somewhere, out of human view, 
Whate'er thy hands are set to do 

Is wrought with tumult of acclaim. 



..■Atf'Mvv. 




LXXVI. 





AKE wings of fancy, and ascend, 
And in a moment set thy face 
,. s „ — ^ Where all the starry heavens of 
space 
Are sharpen'd to a needle's end ; 



Take wings of foresight; lighten thro' 
The secular abyss to come, 
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb 

Before the mouldering of a yew ; 



And if the matin songs, that woke 
The darkness of our planet, last, 
Thine own shall wither in the vast 

Ere half the lifetime of an oak. 



Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers 
With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain ; 
And what are they when these remain 

The ruin'd shells of hollow towers ? 




LXXVII. 

HAT hope is here for modern rhyme 
To him who turns a musing eye 
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie 
Foreshorten'd in the tract of time ? 



These mortal lullabies of pain 

May bind a book, may line a box, 
May serve to curl a maiden's locks; 

Or when a thousand moons shall wane 



A man upon a stall may find, 

And, passing, turn the page that tells 
A grief, then changed to something else, 

Sung by a long-forgotten mind. 



But what of that ? My darken'd ways 
Shall ring with music all the same ; 
To breathe my loss is more than fame, 

To utter love more sweet than praise. 



LXXVIII. 




GAIN at Christmas 
weave 

The holly round the Christmas hearth; 
The silent snow possess'd the earth, 
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve. 

The yule-log sparkled keen with frost, 
No wing of wind the region swept. 
But over all things brooding slept 

The quiet sense of something lost. 
123 



As in the winters left behind, 

Again our ancient games had place, 
The mimic picture's breathing grace, 

And dance and sons and hoodman-blind. 



Who show'd a token of distress ? 
No single tear, no mark of pain : 
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane ? 

O grief, can grief be changed to less ? 



O last regret, regret can die ! 

No — mixtwith all this mystic frame. 
Her deep relations are the same. 

But with long use her tears are dry. 



124 



LXXIX. 




ORE than my brothers are to me," — 
Let this not vex thee, noble heart ! 
I know thee of what force thou 
art 

To hoW the costliest love in fee. 



But thou and I are one in kind. 

As moulded like in Nature's mint; 
And hill and wood and field did print 

The same sweet forms in either mind. 



For us the same cold streamlet curl'd 
Thro' all his eddying coves ; the same 
All winds that roam the twilight came 

In whispers of the beauteous world. 
125 



At one dear knee we proffer 'd vows, 

One lesson from one book we learn'd, 
Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd 

To black and brown on kindred brows. 



And so my wealth resembles thine, 
But he was rich where I was poor, 
And he supplied my want the more 

As his unlikeness fitted mine. 



126 




LXXX. 

F ANY vague desire should rise. 

That holy Death ere Arthur died 
Had moved me kindly from his 
side, 
And dropt the dust on tearless eyes ; 



Then fancy shapes, as fancy can, 

The grief my loss in him had wrought, 
A grief as deep as life or thought, 

But stay'd in peace with God and man. 



I make a picture in the brain ; 

I hear the sentence that he speaks ; 

He bears the burthen of the weeks, 
But turns his l)urthen into irain. 



His credit thus shall set me free ; 

And, influence-rich to soothe and save. 
Unused example from the grave 

Reach out dead hands to comfort me. 



127 




LXXXI. 



OULD I have said while he was here, 
" I\Iy love shall now no further 

range ; 
There cannot come a mellower 
change, 
For now is love mature in ear." 



Love, then, had hope of richer store : 
What end is here to ni}^ complaint ? 
This haunting whisper makes me faint, 

" More years had made me love thee more." 



But Death returns an answer sweet : 
" My sudden frost was sudden gain, 
And gave all ripeness to the grain. 

It midit have drawn from after-heat." 





LXXXII. 



WAGE not any feud with Death 

For changes wrought on form and 

face ; 
No lower life that earth's embrace 
May breed with him can fright my 
faith. 



Eternal ])rocess moving on, 

From state to state the spirit walks; 

And these are but the shatter'd stalks, 
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one. 



Nor blame I Death, because he bare 
The use of virtue out of earth : 
I know transplanted human worth 

Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. 



For this alone on Death I wreak 

The wrath that garners in my heart; 
He put our lives so far apart 

We cannot hear each other speak. 
129 




LXXXIII. 



IP down upon the northern shore, 
O sweet new-year delaying long ; 
Thou doest expectant nature wrong 
Delaying long, delay no more. 



What stays thee from the clouded noons. 
Thy sweetness from its proper place ? 
Can trouble live with April days, 

Or sadness in the summer moons ? 



V Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire. 
The little speedwell's darling blue, 
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, 
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. 



O thou, new-year, delaying long, 
Delayest the sorrow in my blood. 
That longs to burst a frozen bud 

And flood a fresher throat with song. 
130 



LXXXIV. 




HEN I contemplate 

'^ The life that had been thine below, 
i\nd fix my thoughts on all the glow 
To which thy crescent would have grown, 



all 



I see thee sitting crown 'd with good, 
A central warmth diffusing bliss 
In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss. 

On all the branches of thy blood ; 

Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine ; 
For now the day was drawing on. 
When thou shouldst link thy life with one 

Of mine own house, and boys of thine 



Had babbled " Uncle " on my knee ; 
But that remorseless iron hour 
Made cypress of her orange flower, 

Despair of hope, and earth of thee. 
131 



I seem to meet their least desire, 

To clap their cheeks, to call them mine. 
I see their unborn faces shine 

Beside the never-lighted fire. 



I see myself an honour' d guest, 
Thy partner in the flowery walk 
Of letters, genial table-talk. 

Or deep dispute, and graceful jest; 

While now thy prosperous labour fills 
The lips of men with honest praise, 
And sun by sun the happy days 

Descend below the golden hills 



With ])romise of a morn as fair ; 

And all the train of bounteous hours 
Conduct, by paths of growing powers, 

To reverence and the silver hair ; 



Till slowly worn her earthly robe. 
Her lavish mission richly wrought. 
Leaving great legacies of thought. 

Thy s])irit should fail from off the globe ; 

132 



What time mine own might also flee, 
As link'd with thine in love and fate, 
And, hovering o'er the dolorous strait 

To the other shore, involved in thee, 



Arrive at last the blessed goal, 

And He that died in Holy Land 
\\'ould reach us out the shining hand, 

And take us as a single soul. 



What reed was that on which I leant ? 
Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake 
The old bitterness again, and break 

The low besinnines of content ? 




133 




LXXXV. 



, HIS truth came borne with bier 
and pall, 
I felt it, when I sorrow' d most, 
'Tis better to have lov'd and lost, 
Than never to have loved at all — 



^jiv O true in word, and tried in deed, 

B'^ *W^\^ii ' '' Demanding, so to bring relief 
Ijii, I . To this which is our common grief, 

^^?^Sk-i. What kind of life is that I lead: 

i'sl^;.-- ,^' And whether trust in'things above 

Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd; 
And whether love for him have drain'd 
My capabilities of love ; 




Your words have virtue such as draws 
A faithful answer from the breast, 
Thro' light reproaches, half exprest. 

And loyal unto kindly laws. 
134 



My blood an even tenor kept, 

Till on mine ear this message falls, 
That in Vienna's fatal walls 

God's finger touched him, and he slept. 

The great Intelligences fair 

That range above our mortal state. 
In circle round the blessed gate, 

Received and gave him welcome there; 

And led him thro' the blissful climes, 
And show'd him in the fountain fresh 
All knowledge that the sons of flesh 

Shall gather in the cycled times. 

But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim, 
Whose life, whose thoughts were little 

worth, 
To wander on a darken' d earth, 

Where all things round me breathed of him. 

O friendship, equal-poised control, 

O heart, with kindliest motion warm, 
O sacred essence, other form, 

O solemn ghost, O crowned soul ! 
135 



Vet none could better know than I, 
How much of act at human hands 
The sense of human will demands 

By which we dare to live or die. 

Whatever way my days decline, 
I felt and feel, tho' left alone, 
His being working in mine own, 

The footsteps of his life in mine; 

A life that all the Muses deck'd 

With gifts of grace, that might express 
All-comprehensive tenderness, 

All-subtilizing intellect: 

And so my passion hath not swerved 
To works of weakness, but I find 
An image comforting the mind, 

And in my grief a strength reserved. 

Likewise the imaginative woe. 

That loved to handle spiritual strife. 
Diffused the shock thro' all mv life, 

But in the present broke the blow. 

136 



My pulses therefore beat again 

For other friends that once I met ; 
Nor can it suit me to forget 

The mighty hopes that make us men. 

I woo your love : I count it crime 

To mourn for any overmuch ; 

I, the divided half of such 
A friendship as had master'd Time; 

Which masters Time indeed, and is 
Eternal, separate from fears : 
The all-assuming months and years 

Can take no part away from this : 

But Summer on the steaming floods, 

And Spring that swells the narrow brooks, 
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks. 

That gather in the waning woods. 







And every pulse of wind and wave 

Recalls, in change of light or gloom, 
My old affection of the tomb, 

And my prime passion in the grave. 



My old affection of the tomb, 

A part of stillness, yearns to speak: 
" Arise, and get thee forth and seek 

A friendship for the years to come. 



" I watch thee from the quiet shore ; 

Thy spirit up to mine can reach ; 

But in dear words of human speech 
We two communicate no more." 



An<l I, " Can clouds of nature stain 
The starry clearness of the free ? 
How is it ? Canst thou feel for me 

Some painless sympathy with pain ? " 

And lightly does the whisper fall : 

" 'Tis hard for thee to fathom this; 
I triumph in conclusive bliss, 

And that serene result of all." 

138 



So hold I commerce with the dead ; 

Or so methinks the dead would say; 

Or so shall grief with symbols play 
And pining life be fancy-fed. 



Now looking to some settled end, 

That these things pass, and I shall prove 
A meeting somewhere, love with love, 

I crave your pardon, O my friend ; 

If not so fresh, with love as true, 
■ I, clasping brother-hands, aver 
I could not, if I would, transfer 
The whole I felt for him to you. 

For which be they that hold apart 
The promise of the golden hours ? 
First love, first friendship, equal powers, 

That marry with the virgin heart. 

Still mine, that cannot but deplore. 
That beats within a lonely place, 
That yet remembers his embrace. 

But at his footstep leaps no more, 
139 



My heart, tho' widovv'd, may not rest 
Quite in the love of what is gone, 
But seeks to beat in time with one 

That warms another li\in" breast. 



Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring. 
Knowing the primrose yet is dear. 
The primrose of the later year, 

As not unlike to that of spring. 




LXXXVI. 




WEET after showers, ambrosial 
air, 
That roll est from the gorgeous 
gloom 
Of evening over brake and bloom 
And meadow, slovvl)^ breathing bare 



•-Mt^^ 



The round of space, and rapt below 
Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood. 
And shadowing down the horned flood 

In rii)ples, fan my brows and blow 

The fever from my cheek, and sigh 

The full new life that feeds thy breath 
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and 
Death, 

111 brethren, let the fancy fly 



From belt to belt of crimson seas 

On leagues of odour streaming far, 
To where in yonder orient star 

A hundred spirits whisper " Peace." 
141 



LXXXVII. 




PAST beside the reverend walls 

In which of old I wore the gown ; 
I roved at random thro' the town, 
And saw the tumult of the halls ; 



142 



And heard once more in college fanes 

The storm their high-built organs make, 
And thunder-music, rolling, shake 

The jirophet blazon'd on the panes; 

And caught once more the distant shout, 
The measured pulse of racing oars 
Among the willows ; paced the shores 

And many a bridge, and all about 

The same gray flats again, and felt 

The same, but not the same ; and last 
Up that long walk of limes I past 

To see the rooms in which he dwelt. 



Another name was on the door : 
I linger'd; all within was noise 
Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys 

That crash' d the glass and beat the floor; 



Where once we held debate, a band 

Of youthful friends, on mind and art. 
And labour, and the changing mart, 

And all the framework of the land; 
143 



When one would aim an arrow fair, 

But send it slackly from the string ; 
And one would pierce an outer ring, 

And one an inner, here and there ; 



And last the master-l)o\vman, he, 

Would cleave the mark. A willing ear 
We lent him. \Mio, but hung to hear 

The rapt oration flowing free 

From point to point, with power and grace 
And music in the bounds of law, 
lo those conclusions when we saw 

The God within him light his face, 

And seem to lift the form, and glow 
In azure orbits heavenly-wise; 
And over those ethereal eyes 

The bar of Michael Angelo ? 




LXXXVIII. 




ILD bird, whose warble, 
liquid sweet. 
Rings Eden thro' the 

budded quicks, 
O tell me where the 
senses mix, 
O tell me where the passions 
meet. 



Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ 
Thy spirits in tlie darkening leaf. 
And in the midmost heart of grief 

Thy passion clasps a secret joy : 



And I — my harj) would prelude woe — 
I cannot all command the strings; 
The glory of the sum of things 

Will flash along the chords and go. 



145 



LXXXIX. 




ITCH-ELMS that counterchange 

the floor 
Of this flat lawn with dusk and 

bright, 
And thou, with all thy breadth 

and height 
Of foliage, towering sycamore ; 

How often, hither wandering down. 
My Arthur found your shadows fair. 
And shook to all the liberal air 

The dust and din and steam of town ! 

He brought an eye for all he saw ; 

He mixt in all our simple sports ; 

They pleased him, fresh from brawling 
courts 
And dusty purlieus of the law. 

O joy to him in this retreat, 

Immantled in ambrosial dark, 
To drink the cooler air, and mark 

The landscape winking thro' the heat ! 
146 



O sound to rout the brood of cares, 

The sweep of scythe in morning dew, 
The gust that round the garden flew, 

And tumbled half the mellowing pears ! 

O bliss, when all in circle drawn 

About him, heart and ear were fed 
To hear him, as he lay and read 

The Tuscan poets on the lawn ; 

Or in the all-golden afternoon 
A guest, or happy sister, sung, 
Or here she brought the harp and flung 

A ballad to the brightening moon ! 



Nor less it pleased in livelier moods, 
Beyond the bounding hill to stray. 
And break the livelong summer day 

With banquet in the distant woods ; 



Whereat we glanced from theme to theme, 
Discuss'd the books to love or hate, 
Or touch' d the changes of the state. 

Or threaded some Socratic dream; 
147 



But if I praised the busy town, 
He loved to rail against it still, 
For " ground in yonder social mill 

We rub each other's angles down, 

"And merge," he said, " in form and gloss 
The picturesque of man and man." 
We talk'd : the stream beneath us ran, 

The wine-flask lying conch'd in moss. 






-%^^. 



Or cool'd within the glooming wave ; 
And last, returning from afar. 
Before the crimson-circled star 

Had fallen into her father's grave. 

And l)rushing ankle-deep in flowers, 
We heard behind the woodbine veil 
The milk that bubbled in the pail, 

And buzzings of the honeyed hours. 




xc. 




E tasted love with half 
his mind, 
Nor ever drank the in- 
violate spring 
Where nighest heaven, 
who first could fling 
This bitter seed among mankind : 



That could the dead, whose dying eyes 
Were closed with wail, resume their 
life, 

\ They would but find in child and 
wife 
An iron welcome when thev rise. 



'Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine, 
To pledge them with a kindly tear. 
To talk them o'er, to wish them here, 

To covmt their memories half divine ; 



P)Ut if they came who past away. 

Behold their brides in other hands 
149 



The hard heir strides about their lands, 
And will not yield them for a day. 



Yea, the' their sons were none of these. 
Not less the yet-loved sire would make 
Confusion worse than death, and shake 

The pillars of domestic peace. 



Ah, dear, but come thou back to me : 

Whatever change the years have wrought, 
I find not yet one lonely thought 

That cries against my wish for thee. 



150 



XCI. 




HEN rosy plumelets tuft the 
larch, 
And rarely pipes the mounted 
thrush, 
Or underneath the barren bush 
Flits by the sea-blue bird of March ; 

Come, wear the form by which I know 
Thy spirit in time among thy peers ; 
The hope of unaccomplish'd years 

Be large and lucid round thy brow. 

{ 

When summer's hourly-mellowing change '^, d\ 

May breathe, with many roses sweet, \\ \ 

Upon the thousand waves of wheat 
That ripple round the lonely grange, 

Come; not in watches of the night, 

But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, 
Come, beauteous in thine after form, 

And like a finer light in light. 
151 








XCII. 



F any vision should reveal 

Thy likeness, I might count it vain 
As but the canker of the brain ; 

Yea, tho' it spake and made appeal 



To chances where our lots were cast 

Together in the days behind, 

I might l)ut say, I hear a wind 

Of memory murmuring the past. 



Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view 
A fact within the coming year; 
And tho' the months, revolving near. 

Should i)rove the phantom-warning true, 

They might not seem thy prophecies, 
But spiritual presentiments, 
And such refraction of events 

As often rises ere they rise. 



152 



XCIII. 




SHALL not see thee. Dare I say 
No spirit ever brake the band 
That stays him from the native land 

Where first he walk'd when claspt in 
cUiv ? 



No visual shade of some one lost, 

But he, the Spirit himself, may come 
Where all the nerve of sense is numb; 
Spirit to Spirit, (ihost to Ohost. 



O, therefore from thy sightless range 
With gods in unconjectured bliss, 
O, from the distance of the abyss 

Of tenfold-complicated change, 



Descend, and touch, and enter; hear 

The wish too strong for words to name ; 
That in this blindness of the frame 

My Ghost may feel that thine is near. 



153 



XCIV. 




OW pure at heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold, 
Should be the man whose thought would 
hold 
An hour's communion with the dead. 

In vain shalt thou, or any, call 

The spirits from their golden day, 
Except, like them, thou too canst say, 

My spirit is at peace with all. 

They haunt the silence of the breast. 
Imaginations calm and fair, 
The memory like a cloudless air. 

The conscience as a sea at rest ; 

But when the heart is full of din, 
And doubt beside the portal waits, 
They can but listen at the gates, 

And hear the household jar within. 
154 



xcv. 




|Y NIGHT we linger'd on 
the lawn, 
For underfoot the herb 
was dry ; 
And genial warmth; and o'er 
the sky 
The silvery haze of summer drawn ; 



And calm that let the tapers burn 

Unwavering : not a cricket chirr'd : 
The brook alone far-off was heard, 

And on the board the fluttering urn. 

And bats went round in fragrant skies. 
And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes 
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes 

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes ; 

While now we sang old songs that peal'd 
From knoll to knoll, where, couch'd at 
ease, 

155 




The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 
Laid their dark arms about the field. 

But when those others, one by one, 

Withdrew themselves from me and night, 
And in the house light after light 

Went out, and I was all alone, 

A hunger seized my heart ; I read 

Of that glad year which once had been, 
In those fallen leaves which ^cept their 
green, 

The noble letters of the dead. 

And strangely on the silence broke 

The silent-speaking words, and strange 
Was love's dumb cry defying change 

To test his worth ; and strangely spoke 

The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell 

On doubts that drive the coward back. 
And keen thro' wordy snares to track 



So word by word, and line by line. 

The dead man touch'd me from the past, 
156 



And all at once it seem'd at last 
The living soul was flash'd on mine, 

And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd 
About empyreal heights of thought. 
And came on that which is, and caught 

The deep pulsations of the world, 

Ionian music measuring out 

The steps of Time — the shocks of 

Chance — 
The blows of Death. At length my 
trance 
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. 

Vague words ! but ah, how hard to frame 
In matter-moulded forms of speech, 
Or even for intellect to reach 

Thro' memory that which I became ; 

Till now the doubtful dusk reveal' d 

The knolls once more where, couch'd at 

ease. 
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 
Laid their dark arms about the field; 
157 



And suck'd from out the distant gloom 
A breeze began to tremble o'er 
The large leaves of the sycamore, 

And fluctuate all the still perfume, 

And, gathering freshlier overhead, 

Rock'd the fuU-foliaged elms, and swung 
The heavy-folded rose, and flung 

The lilies to and fro, and said, 

"The dawn, the dawn," and died away; 
And East and West, without a breath, 
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death. 

To broaden into boundless day. 





XCVI. 



OU SAY, but with no touch of 
scorn, 
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light- 
blue eyes 
Are tender over drowning 
flies, 
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. 



I know not : one indeed I knew 

In many a subtle question versed. 
Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first, 

But ever strove to make it true : 



Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 
At last he beat his music out. 
There lives more faith in honest doubt, 

Believe me, than in half the creeds. 



He fought his doubts and gather'd strength. 
He would not make his judgment blind. 
He faced the spectres of the mind 

And laid them : thus he came at length 
159 



To find a stronger faith his own ; 

And Power was with him in the night, 
Which makes the darkness and the light, 

And dwells not in the light alone, 



But in the darkness and the cloud, 
As over Sinai's peaks of old, 
While Israel made their gods of 

Altho' the trumpet blew so loud. 



<old, 




XCVII. 






Y LOVE has talk'd with rocks 
and trees ; 
He finds on mistv mountain- 
ground 
His own vast shadow glory-crown 'd ; 
He sees himself in all he sees. 
i6i 



Two partners of a married life — 

I look'd on these and thought of thee 
In vastness and in mystery, 

And of my spirit as of a wife. 



These two — they dwelt with eye on eye, 
Their hearts of old have beat in tune, 
Their meetings made December June, 

Their every parting was to die. 

Their love has never past away; 
The days she never can forget 
Are earnest that he loves her yet, 

Whate'er the faithless people say. 

Her life is lone, he sits apart; 

He loves her yet, she will not weep, 
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep 

He seems to slight her simple heart. 



He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, 
He reads the secret of the star, 
He seems so near and yet so far, 

He looks so cold : she thinks him kind. 
162 



She keeps the gift of years before, 
A wither'd violet is her bliss : 
She knows not what his greatness is, 

For that, for all, she loves him more. 

For him she plays, to him she sings 
Of early faith and jDlighted vows ; 
She knows but matters of the house. 

And he, he knows a thousand things. 



Her faith is fixt and cannot move. 

She darkly feels him great and wise. 
She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 

" I cannot understand : I love." 




163 



XCVIII. 




11 see the Rhine, 
I sail'd below, 
th him ; and go 
eat and vine 



To where he breathed his latest breath, 
That city. All her splendour seems 
No livelier than the wisp that gleams 
On Lethe in the eyes of Death. 

Let her great Danube rolling fair 

Knvvind her isles, unmark'd of me : 
I have not seen, I will not see 

Vienna j rather dream that there, 



A treble darkness. Evil haunts 

The birth, the bridal ; friend from friend 
Is oftener parted, fathers bend 

Above more graves, a thousand wants 
164 



Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey 

By each cold hearth, and sadness flings 
Her shadow on the blaze of kings. 

And yet myself have heard him say 



That not in any mother town 

With statelier progress to and fro 
The double tides of chariots flow 

By park and suburb under brown 

Of lustier leaves ; nor more content, 
He told me, lives in any crowd, 
When all is gay with lamps, and loud 

With sport and song, in booth and tent, 



Imperial halls, or open plain ; 

And wheels the circled dance, and breaks 

The rocket molten into flakes 
Of crimson or in emerald rain. 



165 



XCIX. 




ISEbT thou thus, dim dawn, again. 

So loud with voices of the birds, 
So thick with lowings of the herds, 
Day, when I lost the flower of men ; 

Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red 

On yon swollen brook that bubbles fast 
By meadows breathing of the past. 

And woodlands holy to the dead ; 
i66 



Who miirmurest in the foliaged eaves 
A song that slights the coming care, 
And Autumn laying here and there 

A fiery finger on the leaves ; 

Who wakenest with thy balmy breath 
To myriads on the genial earth, 
Memories of bridal, or of birth. 

And unto myriads more, of death. 

O, wheresoever those may be, 

Betwixt the slumber of the poles, 
To-day they count as kindred souls ; 

They know me not, but mourn with me. 



167 




CUM II the hill : from end to end 

Of all the landscape underneath, 
I find no place that does not breathe 
Some gracious memory of my friend ; 

i6S 



No gray old grange, or lonely fold, 
Or low morass and whispering reed, 
Or simple stile from mead to mead, 

Or sheepwalk up the windy wold ; 



Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw 
That hears the latest linnet trill. 
Nor quarry trench'd along the hill 

And haunted by the wrangling daw; 



Nor runlet tinkling from the rock. 
Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves 
To left and right thro' meadowy curves, 

That feed the mothers of the flock ; 



But each has pleased a kindred eye. 
And each reflects a kindlier day ; 
And, leaving these, to pass away, 

I think once more he seems to die. 



169 




CI. 



NWATCH'D, the garden bough shall 
sway, 
The tender blossom flutter down, 
Unloved, that beech will gather 
brown, 
This maple burn itself away; 



Unloved, the sun- flower, shining fair, 

Ray round with flames her disk of seed, 
And many a rose-carnation feed 

With summer spice the humming air; 

Unloved, by many a sandy bar. 

The brook shall babble down the plain. 
At noon or when the Lesser ^\'ain 

Is twisting round the polar star; 

Uncared for, gird the windy grove, 

And flood the haunts of hern and crake, 
Or into silver arrows break 

The sailing moon in creek and cove; 
170 



Till from the garden and the wild 

A fresh association blow, 

And year by year the landscape grow 
Familiar to the stranger's child; 



As year by year the laborer tills 

His wonted glebe, or lops the glades 
And year by year our memory fades 

From all the circle of the hills. 



171 



CII. 




E LEx-WE the well- beloved place 
Where first we gazed upon the sky ; 
The roofs that heard our earliest cry 
Will shelter one of stranger race. 

We go, but ere we go from home, 
As down the garden-walks I move, 
Two spirits of a diverse love 

Contend for loving masterdom. 



One whispers, " Here thy boyhood sung 
Long since its matin song, and heard 
The low love- language of the bird 

In native hazels tassel-hun^." 



The other answers, " Yea, but here 
Thy feet have stray' d in after hours 
With thy lost friend among the bowers. 

And this hath made them trebly dear." 
172 



These two have striven half the day, 
And each prefers his separate claim, 
Poor rivals in a losing game, 

That will not yield each other way. 



I turn to go : my feet are set 

To leave the pleasant fields and farms; 

They mix in one another's arms 
To one pure image of regret. 



173 




cm. 



N THAT last night before we went 
From out the doors where I was bred, 
I dream'd a vision of the dead, 
Which left my after-morn content. 



"jLj Methought I dwelt within a hall, 
(Xl And maidens with me : distant hills 
' From hidden summits fed with rills 

A river sliding by the wall. 



The hall with harj) and carol rang. 

They sang of what is wise and good 
And graceful. In the centre stood 

A statue veil'd, to which they sang; 

And which, tho' veil'd, was known to me. 
The shape of him I loved, and love 
For ever : then flew in a dove 

And brought a summons from the sea : 



And when they learnt that I must go, 

They wept and wail'd, but led the way 

174 



To where a little shallop lay 
At anchor in the flood below; 

And on by many a level mead, 

And shadowing bluff that made the banks, 
We glided winding under ranks 

Of iris and the golden reed; 

And still as vaster grew the shore 

And roll'd the floods in grander space, 
The maidens gather' d strength and grace 

And presence, lordlier than before ; 

And I myself, who sat apart 

And watch'd them, wax'd in every limb; 

I felt the thews of Anakim, 
The pulses of a Titan's heart ; 

As one would sing the death of war, 
And one would chant the history 
Of that great race which is to be. 

And one the shaping of a star; 

Until the forward-creeping tides 
Began to foam, and we to draw 
From deep to deep, to where we saw 

A great ship lift her shining sides. 
175 



The man we loved was there on deck, 
But thrice as large as man he bent 
To greet us. Up the side 1 went, 

And fell in silence on his neck : 



Whereat those maidens with one mind 
Bewail'd their lot; I did them wrong: 
" We served thee here," they said, " so 
long, 

And wilt thou leave us now behind ? " 



So rapt I was, they could not win 
An answer from my lips, but he 
Replying, " Enter likewise ye. 

And go with us : " thev enter'd in. 



And while the wind began to sweep 
A music out of sheet and shroud, 
We steer' d her toward a crimson cloud 

That landlike slept along the deep. 



176 



CIV. 



fwi-ll'*' 




HE TIME draws near the birth of 
Christ ; 
The moon is hid, the night is 

still; 
A single church below the hill 
Is pealing, folded in the mist. 



A single peal of bells below, 

That wakens at this hour of rest 
A single murmur in the breast. 

That these are not the bells I know. 



Like strangers' voices here they sound, 
In lands where not a memory strays. 
Nor landmark breathes of other davs, 

But all is new unhallow'd t^round. 



177 



cv. 




0-NIGHT ungather'd let us leave 



This laurel, let this holly stand; 
i'ikmj^} " We live within the stranger's land, 
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve. 

Our father's dust is left alone 
And silent under other snows : 
There in due time the woodbine blows, 

The violet comes, but we are gone. 

No more shall wayward grief al)use 

The genial hour with mask and mime; 
For change of place, like growth of 
time, 

Has broke the bond of dying use. 

Let cares that petty shadows cast, 

By which our lives are chiefly proved, 
A little spare the night I loved, 

And hold it solemn to the past. 



But let no footstep beat the floor. 

Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm; 

178 



For who would keep an ancient form 
Thro' which the spirit breathes no more ? 



Be neither song, nor game, nor feast ; 

Nor harp be touch' d, nor flute be blown ; 

No dance, no motion, save alone 
What lightens in the lucid east 



Of rising worlds by yonder wood. 

Long sleeps the summer in the seed ; 
Run out your measured arcs, and lead 

The closing cycle rich in good. 




179 



CVI. 




ING out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
The flying cloud, the frosty light: 
The year is dying in the night ; 

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 



Ring out the old, ring in the new. 
Ring, happy bells, across the snow 
The year is going, let him go ; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 



Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 
For those that here we see no more ; 
Ring out the feud of rich and ])oor. 

Ring in redress to all mankind. 
iSo 



Ring out a slowly dying cause, 

And ancient forms of party strife; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life, 

With sweeter manners, jjurer laws. 



Ring out the want, the care, the sin. 
The faithless coldness of the times ; 
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, 

But rinof the fuller minstrel in. 



Ring out false pride in place and blood. 
The civic slander and the spite; 
Ring in the love of truth and right. 

Ring in the common love of good. 



Ring out old shapes of foul disease ; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; 

Ring out the thousand wars of old. 
Ring in the thousand years of ])eace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land. 

Ring in the Christ that is to be. 
iSi 




evil. 



IS the day when he was born, 
A bitter day that early sank 
Behind a purple-frosty bank 
vapour, leaving night forlorn. 



The time admits not flowers or leaves 
To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies 
The blast of North and East, and ice 

Makes daggers at the sharpen' d eaves, 



And bristles all the brakes and thorns 
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs 
Above the wood which grides and clangs 

Its leafless ribs and iron horns 



Together, in the drifts that pass 
To darken on the rolling brine 
That breaks the coast. But fetch the 
wine, 
Arrange the board and brim the glass; 
182 



Bring in great logs and let them lie, 
To make a solid core of heat ; 
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat 

Of all things even as he were by; 



We keep the day. With festal cheer, 
With books and music, surely we 
Will drink to him, whate'er he be, 

And sing the songs he loved to hear. 




183 



CVIIL- 




WILL not shut me from my kind, 
And, lest I stiffen into stone, 
I will not eat my heart alone, 

Nor feed with sighs a passing wind 



^^'hat profit lies in barren faith, 

And vacant yearning, tho' with might 
To scale the heaven's highest height, 

Or dive below the wells of death? 



What find I in the highest place 

But mine own phantom chanting hymns ? 

And on the depths of death there swims 
The reflex of a human face. 



I'll rather take what fruit mav be 
Of sorrow under human skies : 
'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise, 

Whatever wisdom sleei) with thee. 



184 



CIX. 



EART-AFFLUENCE in 

discursive talk 
f^om household fountains 
never dry ; 
The critic clearness of an eye 
hat saw thro' all the Muses' walk; 

Seraphic intellect and force 

To seize and throw the doubts of 
man ; 
Impassion' d logic, which outran 
The hearer in its fierv course ; 




High nature amorous of the good, 

But touch'd with no ascetic gloom; 
And passion pure in snowy bloom 

Thro' all the years of April blood; 

A love of freedom rarely felt. 
Of freedom in her regal seat 
Of England ; not the schoolboy heat, 

The blind hysterics of the Celt; 



185 



And manhood fused with female grace 
In such a sort, the child would twine 
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine, 

And find his comfort in thy face ; 

All these have been, and thee mine eyes 
Have look'd on : if they look'd in vain. 
My shame is greater who remain. 

Nor let thy wisdom make me wise. 



K^ fer' 



i86 




HY converse drew us with de- 
light, 
The men of rathe and riper 
years ; 
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears. 
Forgot his weakness in thy sight. 

On thee the loyal-hearted hung, 

The proud was half disarm'd of 

pride. 
Nor cared the serpent at thy side 

To flicker with his double tongue. 

|/ The stern were mild when thou wert by, 
The flippant put himself to school 
And heard thee, and the brazen fool 
Was soften'd, and he knew not why; 

While I, thy nearest, sat apart, 

And felt thy triumph was as mine ; 

187 



And loved them more, that they were 
thine, 
The graceful tact, the Christian art ; 



Nor mine the sweetness or the skill, 
But mine the love that will not tire, 
And, born of love, the vague desire 

That spurs an imitative will. 




i88 



CXI 




HE churl in spirit, up or 
.^. down 

Along the scale of ranks, 

thro' all, 
To him who grasps a gold- 
en ball. 
By blood a king, at heart a clown, — 



The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil 

His want in forms for fashion's sake. 
Will let his coltish nature break 

At seasons thro' the gilded i)ale ; 



For who can always act ? but he, 

To whom a thousand memories call, 
Not being less but more than all 

The gentleness he seem'tl to be, 



Best seem'd the thing he was, and join'd 
Each office of the social hour 
To noble manners, as the flower 

And native growth of noble mind ; 
1S9 



Nor ever narrowness or spite, 
Or villain fancy fleeting by, 
Drew in the expression of an eye 

Where God and Nature met in light; 

And thus he bore without abuse 

The grand old name of gentleman, 
Defamed by every charlatan, 

And soil'd with all ignoble use. 



190 



CXTL^. 





"SSPSC 



IGH wisdom holds my wisdom less, 
That I, who gaze with temperate eyes 
On glorious insufficiencies, 
Set light by narrower perfectness. 

But thou, that fillest all the room 
Of all my love, art reason why 
I seem to cast a careless eye 

On souls, the lesser lords of doom. 

For what wert thou ? some novel power 
Sprang up for ever at a touch. 
And hope could never hope too much, 

In watching thee from hour to hour. 

Large elements in order brought, 

And tracts of calm from tempest made. 
And world-wide fluctuation sway'd 

In vassal tides that follow'd thought. 
191 





IS HELD that sorrow makes us wise ; 
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee 
Which not alone had guided me, 

But served the seasons that may rise ; 

For can I doubt, who knew thee keen 
In intellect, with force and skill 
To strive, to fashion, to fulfil — 

I doubt not what thou wouldst have been : 

A life in civic action warm, 

A soul on highest mission sent, 
A potent voice of Parliament, 

A pillar steadfast in the storm. 

Should licensed boldness gather force. 
Becoming, when the time has birth, 
192 



A lever to uplift the earth 
And roll it in another course, 

With thousand shocks that come and go, 
With agonies, with energies, 
With overthrowings, and with cries, 

And undulations to and fro. 




193 




CXIV. 

HO loves not Knowledge ? Who shall 
rail 
Against her beauty ? May she mix 
With men and prosper ! Who shall 
fix 
Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. 



But on her forehead sits a fire : 

She sets her forward countenance 
And leaps into the future chance, 

Submitting all things to desire. 

Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain — 
She cannot fight the fear of death. 
What is she, cut from love and faith, 

But some wild Pallas from the brain 

Of demons ? fiery-hot to burst 
All barriers in her onward race 
For power. Let her know her place ; 

She is the second, not the first. 

A higher hand must make her mild, 
If all be not in vain, and guide 
194 



Her footsteps, moving side by side 
With Wisdom, like the younger child; 

For she is earthly of the mind, 

But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. 
O friend, Avho camest to thy goal 

So early, leaving me behind, 

I would the great world grew like thee, 
\Mio grewest not alone in power 
And knowledge, but by year and hour 

In reverence and in charity. 






195 




cxv. 



OW fades the last long streak of snow, 
Now burgeons every maze of quick 
About the flowering squares, and 
thick 

By ashen roots the violets blow. 



Now rings the woodland loud and long. 
The distance takes a lovelier hue, 
And drown'd in yonder living blue 

The lark becomes a sightless song. 



Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, 
The flocks are whiter down the vale, 
And milkier every milky sail 

On winding stream or distant sea; 



Where now the seamew pipes, or dives 
In yonder greening gleam, and fly 
The happy birds, that change their sky 

To build and brood, that live their lives 
196 



From land to land ; and in my breast 
Spring wakens too, and my regret 
Becomes an April violet, 

And buds and blossoms like the rest. 



«3a^' 





197 



CXVI. 




S rr, then, regret for buried time 
That keenlier in sweet April wakes, 
I'l '^11 And meets the year, and gives and 
' "* ^' takes 
J 1 he colours of the crescent prime? 

Not all : the songs, the stirring air, 
The life re-orient out of dust. 
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust 

In that which made the world so fair. 

Not all regret : the face will shine 
Upon me, while I muse alone; 
And that dear voice, I once have known, 

Still speak to me of me and mine : 

Yet less of sorrow lives in me 

For days of happy commune dead. 
Less yearning for the friendship fled 

Than some strong bond which is to be. 




CXVII. 




DAYS and Iiours, your work is 
this, 
To hold me from my proper 
place, 

A little while from his embrace, 
For fuller gain of after bliss : 



That out of distance might ensue 
Desire of nearness doubly sweet. 
And unto meeting, when we meet, 

Delight a hundredfold accrue, 



For every grain of sand that runs. 

And every span of shade that steals, 
And every kiss of toothed wheels, 

And all the courses of the suns. 



199 




CXVIII. 



'?/ V,i 





ONTEMPLATE all this ^^ork of Time, 
The giant labouring in his youth; 
Nor dream of human love and truth 
As dying Nature's earth and lime; 

But trust that those we call the dead 
Are breathers of an ampler day 
For ever nobler ends. They say, 

The solid earth whereon we tread 



In tracts of fluent heat began, 

And grew to seeming-random forms. 
The seeming prey of cyclic storms, 

Till at the last arose the man ; 



Who throve and branch'd from clime to 
clime, 
The herald of a higher race, 
200 



And of himself in higher phice, 
If so he type this work of time 

Within himself, from more to more; 
Or, crown 'd with attributes of woe 
Like glories, move his course, and show 

That life is not as idle ore. 



But iron dug from central gloom. 

And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipt in baths of hissing tears, 

And batter' d with the shocks of doom 



To shape and use. Arise and fly 

The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; 
Move upward, working out the beast. 

And let the ape and tiger die. 



CXIX. 




POORS, where my heart was used to beat 
So quickly, not as one that weeps 
I come once more ; the city sleeps ; 
I smell the meadow in the street; 

I hear a chirp of birds ; I see 

Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn 
A light-blue lane of early dawn, 

And think of early days and thee. 



And bless thee, for thy lips are bland. 

And bright the friendship of thine eye; 
And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh 

I take the pressure of thine hand. 




cxx. 




TRUST I have not wasted 
breath : 
I think we are not wholly 

brain, 
Magnetic mockeries ; not 
in vain, 
Like Paul with beasts, I fought 
with Death ; 



Not only cunning casts in clay : 

Let Science prove we are, and then 
What matters Science unto men, 

At least to me ? I would not stay. 



Let him, the wiser man who springs 
Hereafter, up from childhood shape 
His action like the greater ape, 

But I was horn to other things. 



203 



CXXI. 






AD HESPER o'er the buried sun 

And ready, thou, to die with him. 
Thou watchest all things ever dim 
And dimmer, and a glory done : 



The team is loosen 'd from the wain. 
The boat is drawn upon the shore ; 
Thou listenest to the closing door, 

And life is darken'd in the brain. 



Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night. 
By thee the world's great work is heard 
Beginning, and the wakeful bird; 

Behind thee comes the greater light: 
204 



The market boat is on the stream, 
And voices hail it from the brink; 
Thou hear'st the village hammer clink, 

And seest the movinc; of the team. 



Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name 
For what is one, the first, the last, 
Thou, like my present and my past, 

Thy place is changed ; thou art the same. 





CXXII. 



WAST thou with me, dearest, then, 
While I rose up against my doom. 
And yearn'd to burst the folded gloom, 
'o bare the eternal heavens again, 



To feel once more, in placid awe, 
The strong imagination roll 
A sphere of stars about my soul, 

In all her motion one with law ? 



If thou wert with me, and the grave 
Divide us not, be with me now, 
And enter in at breast and brow, 

Till all my blood, a fuller wave. 



Be quicken'd with a livelier breath, 
And like an inconsiderate boy. 
As in the former flash of joy, 

I slip the thoughts of life and death ; 

206 



And all the breeze of Fancy blows, 
And every dewdrop paints a bow, 
The wizard lightnings deeply glow, 

And every thought breaks out a rose. 




207 



CXXIII. 









HERE rolls the deep where grew the tree. 

O earth, what changes hast thou seen ! 

There where the long street roars hath 
been 
The stillness of the central sea. 



The hills are shadows, and they flow 

From form to form, and nothing stands ; 
They melt like mist, the solid lands, 

Like clouds they shape themselves and go. 



But in my spirit will I dwell. 

And dream my dream, and hold it tme ; 

For tho' mv lips may breathe adieu, 
I cannot think the thing farewell. 
208 



CXXIV. 





HAT which we dare invoke to 
bless ; 
Our dearest faith ; our ghast- 
liest doubt ; 
He, They, One, All ; within, 
without ; 
The Power in darkness whom we guess ; 



I found Him not in world or sun, 
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye ; 
Nor thro' the questions men may try, 

The petty cobwel^s we have spun : 



If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, 
I heard a voice, " Believe no more," 
And heard an ever-breaking shore 

That tumbled in the Godless deep; 
209 



A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And like a man in wrath the heart 

Stood up and answer'd, " I have felt." 

No, like a child in doubt and fear : 

But that blind clamour made me wise ; 
Then was I as a child that cries, 

But, crying, knows his father near; 

And what I am beheld again 

What is, and no man understands ; 
And out of darkness came the hands 

That reach thro' nature, moulding men. 




cxxv. 




HATEVER I have 
said or sung, 
Some bitter notes my 

harp woukl give, 
Yea, tho' there often 
seem'd to live 
contradiction on the 
tongue, 



Yet Hope had never lost her youth ; 

She did but look through dimmer eyes ; 

Or Love but play'd with gracious lies, 
Because he felt so fixt in truth : 

And if the song were full of care. 

He breathed the spirit of the song; 
And if the words were sweet and strong, 

He set his royal signet there; 



Abiding with me till I sail 

To seek thee on the mystic deeps, 
And this electric force, that keeps 

A thousand pulses dancing, fail. 

211 



CXXVI. 





OVE is and was my lord and king, 

And in his presence I attend 
To hear the tidings of my friend, 
Which every hour his couriers bring. 

Love is and was my king and lord, 
And will be, tho' as yet I keep 
Within his court on earth, and sleep 

Encompass'd by his faithful guard. 



And hear at times a sentinel 

Who moves about from place to place, 
And whispers to the worlds of space. 

In the deep night, that all is well. 



CXXVII. 




ND all is well, tho' faith and 
form 
Be sunder'd in the night of 
fear ; 

Well roars the storm to those that hear 
A deeper voice across the storm, 



Proclaiming social truth shall spread, 
And justice, even tho' thrice again 
The red fool-fury of the Seine 

Should pile her barricades with dead. 
213 



But ill for him that wears a crown, 
And him, the lazar, in his rags : 
They tremble, the sustaining crags; 

The spires of ice are toppled down, 

And molten up, and roar in flood ; 
The fortress crashes from on high. 
The brute earth lightens to the sky, 

And the great .Kon sinks in blood. 

And comj)ass'd by the fires of hell ; 
While thou, dear spirit, happy star, 
O'erlook'st the tumult from afar, 

And smilest, knowing all is well. 



214 



CXXVIII. 



HE love that rose on strong- 
er wings, 
Unpalsied when he met 

with Death, 
Is comrade of the lesser 
faith 
That sees the course of human thinirs. 




No doubt vast eddies in the flood 

Of onward time shall yet be made, 
And throned races may degrade ; 

Yet, O ye mysteries of good. 

Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear, 

If all your office had to do 

With old results that look like new — 
If this were all vour mission here. 



To draw, to sheathe a useless sword. 
To fool the crowd with glorious lies, 
To cleave a creed in sects and cries, 

To change the bearing of a word, 
215 



To shift an arbitrary power, 

To cramp the student at his desl<, 
To make ohl bareness picturesque 

And tuft with grass a feudal tower: 










Why, then my scorn might well descend 
On you and yours. I see in part 
That all, as in some piece of art, 

Is toil cooperant to an end. 

2lG 



CXXIX. 



l^vAR friend, far off, my lost de- 
sire. 
So far, so near in woe and 

weal ; 
O loved the most, when most 
I feel 
There is a lower and a higher ; 




Known and unknown ; human, divine; 

Sweet human hand and lips and eye ; 

Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, 
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine : 

Strange friend, past, present, and to be ; 

Loved deeplier, darklier understood; 

Behold, I dream a dream of good, 
And minde all the world with thee. 



217 



cxxx. 




HY voice is on the rolling air; 
\ I hear thee where the waters run ; 
g. Thou standest in the rising sun, 
^And in the setting thou art fair. 



What art thou then ? I cannot guess ; 
But tho' I seem in star and flower 
To feel thee some diffusive power, 
I do not therefore love thee less. 



My love involves the love before ; 

My love is vaster passion now ; 

Tho' mixt with God and Nature thou, 
I seem to love thee more and more. 

Far off thou art, but ever nigh ; 

I have thee still, and I rejoice; 

I prosper, circled with thy voice ; 
I shall not lose thee tho' I die. 



218 



CXXXI. 




LIVING will that shalt endure 
When all that seems shall suffer shock, 
Rise in the spiritual rock, 
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 

That we may lift from out of dust 
A voice as unto him that hears, 
A cry above the conquer' d years 

To one that with us works, and trust. 

With faith that comes of self-control, 
The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved. 

And all we flow from, soul in soul. 
219 



Tho' I since then have number'd o'er 

Some thrice three years ; they went and 

came, 
Remade the blood and changed the frame, 

And yet is love not less, but more ; 

No longer caring to embalm 

In dying songs a dead regret, 

But like a statue solid-set, 
And moulded in colossal calm. 

Regret is dead, but love is more 

Than in the summers that are flown, 
For I myself with these have grown 

To something greater than before; 

^^'hich makes appear the songs I made 
As echoes out of weaker times, 
As half but idle brawling rhymes, 

The sport of random sun and shade. 

But where is she, the bridal flower. 

That must be made a wife ere noon ? 
She enters, glowing like the moon 

Of Eden on its bridal bower : 

222 



On me she bends her blissful eyes 

And then on thee ; they meet thy look 
And brighten like the star that shook 

Betwixt the palms of Paradise. 



O, when her life was yet in bud, 
He too foretold the perfect rose. 
For thee she grew, for thee she grows 

For ever, and as fair as good. 



And thou art worthy ; full of power; 
As gentle ; liberal-minded, great, 
Consistent; wearing all that weight 

Of learning lightly like a flower. 



But now set out : the noon is near, 
And I must give away the bride; 
She fears not, or, with thee beside 

And me behind her, will not fear. 

For I that danced her on my knee. 

That watch' d her on her nurse's arm. 
That shielded all her life from harm. 

At last must part with her to thee ; 
223 



Now waiting to be made a wife, 

Her feet, my darling, on the dead ; 
Their pensive tablets round her head, 

And the most living words of life 




Breathed in her ear. The ring is on, 

The " Wilt thou? " answer'd, and again 
The "Wilt thou?" asked, till out of 
twain 

Her sweet " I will " has made you one. 

Now sign your names, which shall be read, 
Mute symbols of a joyful morn, 
By village eyes as yet unborn : 

The names are signed, and overhead 

Begins the clash and clang that tells 
The joy to every wandering breeze ; 
t1 The blind wall rocks, and on the trees 

m^ The dead leaf trembles to the bells. 

O happy hour, and happier hours 
Await them. Many a merrv face 
Salutes them — maidens of the place 

That i)elt us in tiie porch with flowers. 
224 




O happy hour, behold the bride 

\\'ith him to whom her hand I gave. 
They leave the porch, they pass the grave 

That has to-tlay its sunny side. 

To-day the grave is bright for me, 

For them the light of life increased. 
Who stay to share the morning feast, 

Who rest to-nisrht beside the sea. 



Let all my genial spirits advance 
To meet and greet a whiter sun ; 
My drooping memory will not shun 

The foaming grape of eastern France. 

It circles round, and fancy plays. 

And hearts are warm'd and faces bloom. 
As drinking health to bride and groom 

We wish them store of happy days. 

Nor count me all to blame if I 
Conjecture of a stiller guest. 
Perchance, perchance, among the rest, 

And, the' in silence, wishing joy. 
225 



lUit tliey must go, the time draws on, 
And those white-favour' d horses wait; 
They rise, but linger; it is late; 

Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone. 

A shade falls on us like the dark 

From little cloudlets on the grass, 
p]ut sweeps away as out we pass 

To range the woods, to roam the park. 

Discussing how their courtship grew. 
And talk of others that are wed. 
And how she look'd, and what he said, 

And back we come at fall of dew. 



Again the feast, the s])eech, the glee. 

The shade of passing thought, the wealth 
Of words and wit, the double health. 

The crowning cup, the three-times-three. 

And last the dance ; — till I retire : 

Dumb is that tower which spake so loud, 
And high in heaven the streaming cloud. 

And on the downs a rising fire. 
226 








And rise, O moon, from yonder down. 
Till over down and over dale 
All night the shining vapour sail 

And pass the silent-lighted town. 



The white-faced halls, the glancing rills. 
And catch at every mountain head. 
And o'er the friths that branch and spread 

Their sleeping silver thro' the hills; 
227 



And touch with shade the bridal doors, 
With tender gloom the roof, the wall ; 
And breaking let the splendour fall 

To spangle all the happy shores 

By which they rest, and ocean sounds. 
And, star and system rolling past, 
A soul shall draw from out the vast 

And strike his being into bounds, 

And, moved through life of lower phase, 
Result in man, be born and think, 
And act and love, a closer link 

Betwixt us and the crowning race 

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look 

On knowledge ; under whose command 
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand 

Is Nature like an open book ; 



No longer half-akin to brute. 

For all we thought and loved and did. 
And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed 

Of what in them is flower and fruit; 
228 



Whereof the man, that with me trod 
This planet, was a noble type 
Appearing ere the times were ripe. 

That friend of mine who lives in God, 

That God, which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 

To which the whole creation moves. 




239 



i;o8 



^ 



LBAg'05 



^^ v^'' 



•-^ 



,0 0. 



^0 






h^' 






^^. 






::^./^ 



'^ ,^\^^' 






-^^ 



.^^ 









.^:^■■ -^v 









a\ ~ 



,0o. 



,■0^ 



% .<' 



^% ^1 



o,^ 












,0 o^ 



.^% 

\^.' -< 









' ■^^.. 









^^. * .-. N ^ ^^^^ 

^\\ N c ^ -/^ 



;-\ 









c^<^ 









.^^■' 






<^-^ 

l^ 



1^ 



,.o- 



^^. 



l'-^^ 






o 0' 



,0 0^ 









^.^' 

.^% 









.^^' 






.-^ 












.■X' 



■tS- AV 



^\^' '^z 



</>. 






.-o- 






.-^"^ 



0-, .0- 



-■'o^ ^ 



-I '<- 



^^y V-i 



r 



, ^/*.s\.^ >' 



/ -^c. 



#'^^. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 546 5916 ^ 



